


■■ 



A* 



SERMONS 



IN 



Plymouth Churchy Brooklyn, 

By HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

?# 



FROM VERBATIM REPORTS BY T. J. ELLINWOOD. 



SEPTEMBER, 1873— MARCH, 1874. 




NEW YORK. 
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT 




ISS2. 



/N\ 



l0f cot"*** 



# 

** 



n^ 3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 

BY J. B. FORD A1SD COMPANY 

in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington: 



i 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

I. Religion in Daily Life (Rom. xii. 11) . . . 7 

Lesson : Psalms lxxii. • Hymns : 660, 759, 889. 

II. Forelookings (Prov. xiv. 12) 25 

LESSON : Psalm cxxlii., cxxiv., cxxv. Htmns : 199, 180, 500. 

III. Heroism (Mark xii. 41-44, xiv. 8, 9) . . 45 

Lesson : Mark xiv. 1-9. Hymns : 639, 907, 1244. 

IV. The New Testament Theory of Evolution 

(1 John iii. 2, 3) 65 

Lesson : Col. i. 1-22. Hymns : 199, 725, 497. 

V. The Atoning God (Heb. iv. 14-16) .... 85 
Lesson : Isaiah liv. Hymns : 130, 296, 364. 

VI. Prayer (1 Tim. ii. 1, 2) 105 

Lesson : John xvii. Hymns : 166, 816, 660. 

VII. Man's two Natures (1 Cor. ii. 14, 15) 127 

Lesson : Rom. vii. Hymns : 907, 787, 908. 

^III. All-Sidedness in Christian Life (Eph. vi. 13) . 149 

Lesson : Matt. iii. Hymns : 666. 655, 657. 

IX. Fact and Fancy (2 Cor. iv. 18) 167 

Lesson : 1 John iv. Hymns : 170, 270, 389. 

X. Cuba, and the Brotherhood of Nations 

(Gal. iii. 28) 193 

Lesson : Matt. v. 1-14. Hymns : 725, 1008, 1001. 

XL The Moral Teaching of Suffering (Rom. v. 6-8) 215 

Lesson : Rom. v. Hymns : 269, 545, 648. 

XII. How GOES THE Battle ? (Matt. xi. 12) . . . . 237 
Lesson : Isaiah lxi. Hymns : 1344, 997. 

XIII. The Nature of Christ (Heb. ii. 17, 18. Heb. iv. 16) . 259 

Lesson : Rev. v. Hymns : 217, 296, 454. 



♦Plymouth Collection. 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XIV. Working and Waiting (Eph. vi. 13) 279 

LESSON : Psalm cxxxix. Hymns : 365, 438, 907. 

XV. What is Christ to Me ? (Col. i. 10) 305 

Lesson : Col. i. Hymns : 210, 215, 607. 

XVI. The Science op Right Living (Eph. iv. 31, 32) . 329 
Lesson : Eph. iv. Hymns : 180, 381, 11. 

XVII. Religious Constancy (Hos. vi. 3, 4) . . . 355 

Lesson : Psalm cxlv. Hymns : 104, 668. 

XVIII. Soul Power (1 Cor. xii. 3) 381 

LESSON : Rom. viii. 15-39. Hymns : 299, 137. 

XIX. The Riches of God (Eph. ii. 4-7) . . . .407 

Lesson : Eph. i. Hymns : 162, 660, " Homeward Bound." 

XX. St. Paul's Creed (Phil. iv. 8) . . . , 437 

Lesson : Rev. v. Hymns : 1154, 1251, 1353. 
XXI. The Departed Christ (John xvi. 7) 455 

LESSON : Heb. xi. 1-3 ; 17-40. Hymns : 31, 668, 1230. 

XXII. The Naturalness of Faith (2 Cor. v. 7) . .481 

LESSON : 2 Cor. 14-18 ; v. 1-11. Hymns : 217, 868, 660. 

XXIII. Spiritual Manhood (2 Cor. xii. 10) 507 

Lesson : 1 Cor. i. 17-31; ii. 1-15. Hymns : 346, 1235, " Shining Shore." 

XXIV. The Debt of Strength (Rom. i. 14, 15) . . 531 

XiESSON: Ltffce xiv. 1-22. HYMNS : 604, 1020, 1040. 

XXV. Special Providence (Matt. vi. 19-34) . . .555 

HYMNS : 199, 120. 

XXVI. Keeping the Faith (Heb. x. 35. 36) . . . 577 

LESSON : Heb, xii. HYMNS : 981, 898. 



RELIGION II DAILY LIFE. 



BELIGION T$ DAILY LIFE. 



" Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord. "- 
Rom. xii. 11. 



These things are not merely in juxtaposition. The three 
commands are intimately related to each other. Being not 
slothful in business, is being diligent in business ; and being 
fervent in spirit, is serving the Lord. It is service to the 
Lord to be diligent, enterprising, active, in useful business. 

This brings religion down into the sphere of ordinary and 
practical things. It does not exclude the conception of med- 
itation ; it does not exclude the idea, at times, of joy, or even 
of ecstacy, if that be the gift of God to any spirit : but it 
takes away from religion, if I may so say, the professional 
element. It takes it out of the category of artificial things, 
of things superinduced upon the course of nature and of life, 
and makes it to consist in the right ordering of disposition 
and conduct in the usual duties of life. 

The great duties of life, as they are ordinarily distrib- 
uted, both in the household and out of it, are indispensable 
to the development of the whole nature of man, and of 
the prime virtues ; and they are the instruments, or, to em- 
ploy the language of olden times, the " means of grace," 
in life. The church, the lecture-room, the prayer and con- 
ference meeting, the communion of saints, were once spoken 
of as " means of grace." They are means of grace when they 
produce grace ; but it would seem, in the Yery use of them, 
as if they were meant to exclude common life, common du- 
ties, common occupations ; whereas, in the divine economy, 
everything that pertains to the well-being of the individual, 
and the prosperity of the household, and the welfare of the 

Sunday Evening, February 9, 1873. Lesson : Psalm lxxli. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nos. 660, 759, 889. 



8 RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

community in which men live, tends to that amassing of 
force which results in civilization. Everything which occu- 
pies thought, and ripens into enterprise, and ripens enter- 
prise into success and fruitful achievement, is part and parcel 
of the divine scheme. 

Therefore, the man who bends over his bench may be as 
really worshiping God, fulfilling the will of God, and doing- 
God's service, as he who bends over the altar. He who 
stands at the blacksmith's forge may be as really rendering 
God service as he who reads from the Psalms or the Gospels. 
He who is rightly performing the duties of life is worshiping, 
if worship means rendering acceptable service to God. 

I would not exclude the fruit of fervency of spirit. Fer- 
vency of spirit means that kind of inspiration which belongs 
to the faculties, and by which they rouse themselves to their 
highest achievements. We know what it is to be dull. We 
know what it is to be aroused a little. We know what a wide 
gulf there is between being aroused a little and being in a 
state of supreme activity. When there has fallen, as it were, 
a fire of excitement upon our faculties, they sparkle, they 
glow, they burn ; and ' { fervency " is burning. It is that 
intensity of feeling by which there is corruscation, light, 
heat ; and religion deals in just that fervency of mind. Nor 
is one inconsistent with the other ; but one comes from the 
other. Diligence in business is unslothfulness. One who is 
not slothful in business, one who gives the full activity of his 
nature to the things which concern him in the sphere where 
God has planted him, has his mind in that condition in 
which it will ever be in communion with God. 

They who think that to be religious they must step out 
from life, and that they cannot be religious while they are 
engaged in human affairs, quite mistake the whole divine 
economy. I say that the man who goes apart from human 
interests, who sits unstirred and tranquil in the midst of the 
events of life, and who hides himself from responsibility and 
care, is far less likely to be fervent in spirit, or to be serving 
the Lord, than the man who is engaged, with the right spirit, 
in human affairs. Activity in business gives that kind of 
vitality, that wholesome, fresh condition of mind, which is 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 9 

the very prime ingredient of fervency of spirit. And this 
fervency, this life which is produced by force, is to a very 
large extent the source of our strength ; the source of our 
good moral judgment ; the source of all those virtues which 
are to be developed in us. 

Let us look at a few points of development of a particular 
character which are needed to constitute a true manhood. 

And first, order : — how will you learn that ? I cannot 
preach it to you. You cannot conform your life to order by 
thinking of it. It is by the conduct of business that you 
learn order. Method, which is essentially foresight, or look- 
ing before, and ordering all things according to a certain line 
of purposed sequence, — that cannot be taught you theoret- 
ically. It can be learned only by practice, which has in it 
necessity, and which develops* order and method in men. 
Eegularity, or the continuance of activity in certain channels 
till success is achieved : — how shall men come to this ? Not 
by the catechism, not by the Word of God, and not by the 
sanctuary. These things can teach, but they cannot train. 
Business trains. It is so ordered that one cannot succeed 
unless he keeps step. Punctuality, exactitude, enterprise — 
these things are learned in life. 

To look at another side of it, carefulness as distinguished 
from headlong, indiscriminate living ; frugality, as distin- 
guished from wastefulness ; benevolence, as the distribution 
of things which one has himself received ; the sympathy 
which comes by the helpfulness of men in their affairs — how 
could one learn these things if there were no shop, no store, 
no factory, no ship, no business ? They spring out of deal- 
ing with practical life. It is that by which men bring 
their thoughts to bear upon nature, studying its laws, and 
out of its laws producing profitable results, and doing it by 
interfiliation with their fellow-men ; by maintaining compact, 
faith, confidence, sympathy, helpfulness, honesty, integrity 
with them ; by exercising frugality ; by observing this round 
of what may be called minor morals, but which, after all, 
are the foundations on which we build the higher spirituali- 
ties. These things cannot be learned except in practical life. 

If you house your child ; if you shield him from all avoca- 



1 RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

tions, lie may learn a small round of such things in the fam- 
ily ; but no such education does he receive as ^me that is 
pushed out into life. A child that is sedulously guarded at 
home, knows nothing of life outside of home. One may 
learn boating on a pond ; but a man who does well on a pond 
may do poorly on the Atlantic Ocean. And many a man 
who at home is honest and not particularly temptable, if 
thrown suddenly out into life, in the midst of temptations, 
will fall for want of training. 

I am not one of those who revile the denizens of Wall 
Street, though I think there are many of them who are not 
saints. It seems to me that if, on the one hand, they sink 
nearly to the bottom of the scale, on the other hand they rise 
nearly to the top. If a man in that street does business with 
all kinds of men, and under the pressure of every temptation, 
and goes steadily on with fidelity and trustworthiness, I think 
he reaches about as high a mark of honesty as any man that 
lives on the globe. He has been as much drilled and prac- 
ticed, and probably may be trusted as far, as any man in the 
world. 

On the other hand, there be many who are virtuous, 
that have been shielded in the farm-house, who have been 
under pious influences from their youth up, and who have re- 
joiced and thrived in honesty and integrity ; but who, by- 
and-by, when in the providence of God they are desolated, 
and thrown out of place, and brought into the street, and 
under its influence, have been destroyed. And it is notorious 
that they are the most gullible, the most easily tempted, the 
most frangible of any men that go into the street — and why- 
should they not be ? They have not been drilled in street 
operations. 

How is it with soldiers ? Are raw recruits as reliable as 
veterans ? No. They are easily scattered. Why ? Because 
they have not had drill. 

So, in worldly affairs, a man cannot be trusted who has 
not been trained in the school of those affairs. When the 
spiritual disposition goes with diligence in business, in the 
actual conflicts of life, men find more that follows manhood 
in its essential elements, in its trustworthiness, in its fidelity, 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 1 1 

in its enterprise, in its largeness of spirit, than can be found 
under any dome on any temple, or before any altar. Not 
that these things are not desirable ; they are : but these give 
the theory. It is the life that gives the fact, the reality. It 
is the drill of daily life, in this world, that is the prime con- 
dition and instrument by which God fashions character, and 
makes manhood noble. 

I think that if men were practiced more in public life ; if 
the stress were brought upon them earlier ; if they were 
taught to resist and overcome temptation at the outset of 
their career, they would not be so much imperilled by public 
service. And while " revolution in office" may be all very well, 
the time will come when men shall be brought up from the 
beginning to serve in public, and shall study public affairs, 
and devote themselves to them, so that they shall stand not 
only untempted but untemptable. We shall have men that 
break down easily in public affairs until we have men who, if 
I may so say, have been trained in temptation, and become 
impervious and tough. 

In the line of these considerations, then, I may say in 
the first place that every man ought to find his Christian 
life in connection with that which God has made his daily 
business and duty. There be many who accept religion, but 
with whom religion is a kind of luxury. Daily business is 
necessary, but is a necessary evil, in their estimation. Kelig- 
ion, to them, is that which they mean to enjoy when they 
get through with their business. They mean to be religious, 
therefore, on the Sabbath day, in the church, in the assembly 
of Christian men, or while they are reading good books or 
singing sacred hymns. But religion is something else besides 
reading, and singing, and attending church. Eeligion is 
right-acting, as well as right-thinking. Being not slothful 
in business, being ferveut in spirit, and in both ways serving 
the Lord, are things not understood by some men. 

The school-boy's religion must lie in the duties of the 
school-boy. The sailor's religion must conform itself to the 
duties which are incumbent on the mariner. The merchant's 
religion must be found within the compass and bounds of 
commercial life. None of them are to be shirked. No man 



1 2 RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

can say, in regard to anything in which he is engaged, "I 
must go through this before I can be religious." You have 
no business to touch a thing which it is not right to do ; and 
whatever it is right to do is compatible with moral feeling, 
fervency of spirit, and real service to the Lord. 

Are you looking for the witness of the Spirit ? I say unto 
you, that it is to be found in life. Are you looking for 
some divine influx ? It may be that you will have it ; and if 
you do have it, be faithful to it ; but do not be troubled if 
you do not have it in the way you expect it. Are you look- 
ing for religion as something different from the faithful per- 
formance of duties where God has put you ? Do you recog- 
nize God as your Father, the Holy Spirit as your Enlightener, 
and Christ as your Saviour ? Have you been put to drill ? 
and do you accept your duties, from day to day, every one of 
them, as services to God, putting your whole heart into them, 
putting your conscience into them, putting your taste into 
them, and putting your sympathies into them, so that they 
shall have no drudgery ? It is given the soul to pour light 
over things that are dark, and to impart perfume to things 
that are odorless. Every man should bring to the affairs of 
life so much of himself, should associate with outward things 
so much of his inner being that the outward should be trans- 
figured and transformed. Great is the power of association. 

How the wilderness blossoms like a rose to those who look 
at it through their affections ! How cold and cheerless is the 
palace where there is no love, no hope, no transport, no joy- 
ful experience ! It is stately, brilliant, beautiful, but deso- 
late. The old brown house where you were brought up, and 
the old barn where, from day to day, you did duty with 
stubbed fingers and bare feet, and the old fields over whose 
hills you have climbed — homely as these scenes are, is there 
anything so beautiful to you as they are in their homeliness, 
when you go back to them ? It is what you have put on to 
these old things that makes them so dear to you. It is that 
memory of your own life which has grown in connection with 
them. It is that part of yourself which you see in them. 

So, the duties of life become more agreeable by reason of 
their association with ourselves and that which is dear to us. 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 1 3 

It is not always the most comely offices that are the most 
tolerable. The service of a mother to a child involves some- 
thing more than the mere act. It is invested with a feeling 
which makes it to the mother one of the most delightful of 
ioccupations. What mother does not know that it is a privi- 
lege to tend her own babe ? What sick mother does not 
look sadly and enviously upon the nurse that performs the 
functions that must be performed for the child ? And yet 
they are often functions which, if they were performed for 
any other than the mother's own child, would be odious to 
her. 

Look upon the maiden, who vies with the butterfly ; who, 
like the butterfly, is light, gay, songful ; who seems as though 
she would be defiled even by the falling of the dew upon her. 
She is the darling of her father's house, and no man is found 
worthy of her. She marries ; and every one says, " She has 
thrown herself away upon that man." She goes out into life ; 
and the mysterious door that opens infinity is opened when 
the child is born. Then she loves as she never loved before. 
Then is opened the eye of the heart. Then not only love but 
faith is awakened. And what a transformation has taken 
place ! How she has forgotten the festal party ! How she has 
forgotten the sound of social music ! How she has forgotten all 
flatteries ! For in yonder little cradle is a cherub that sings to 
her. And in her daily duties, morning and evening, while 
serving this little unrequiting thing, that can neither see, nor 
think, nor know that she is its mother, how her life bounds 
forth ! and how her soul is poured out ! And men say, 
" What a change !" Yes, there is a great change. The 
duties to which she applies herself are, to her, changed. 
How ? By that of herself which she has brought to them. 
The cradle is not comely, and the service of the babe is not 
tasteful, to nature ; but from the heart has gone out an 
atmosphere that transfigures it all ; and fills it with beauty 
and desirableness. 

And that which we see in the mother extends more or less 
through every part of life. That to which you bring dili- 
gence, and conscience, and taste, and cheerfulness, and glad- 
ness, and sympathy, becomes transformed. Whether a man 



1 4 RELIGION IJST BAIL Y LIFE. 

be in the stable, or in the colliery, or in the stithy, or on the 
ship, or in the shop ; wherever a man is, if he has a manly 
heart, and can bring to his affairs real manliness — there duty 
becomes to him blossoming, and that is sweet which other- 
wise would be bitter. 

Let not men, therefore, mumble their business, as un- 
hungry boys do their unwelcome bread. Let not men say, 
" Oh, you have a good time preaching ; but if you were a 
blacksmith you would find it different." I sometimes wish I 
were one. I have hammered as much cold iron in the pulpit 
as ever a blacksmith did hot iron on the anvil. Let not men 
say, "Ah! if you were poor and had to drudge, you would 
not see things as you do now." I have been poor, and I have 
had to drudge. I have been through the various stages be- 
tween adversity and prosperity, and I have found that some 
functions require less and some more moral elements than 
others ; but I have also found that a kingly, noble-spirited 
man can redeem many duties which are in themselves unat- 
tractive and repulsive, and make them honorable and beauti- 
ful and agreeable. 

There is no place where God puts you, where it is not 
your duty to turn round, and say, " How shall I perfume this 
place, and make it fragrant as the honeysuckle and the violet, 
and beautiful as the rose ?" In this world you are to perform 
the great duties of spiritual, moral and physical life, in the 
place where you are. 

If you are a boy in school you are to perform the duties 
which are assigned you by your master, by reason of your 
allegiance to Christ. It is not a question between you and 
your master ; neither is it a question between you and your 
thought and judgment : it is a question between you and the 
Lord Jesus Christ. In whatever position one is called to 
occupy, he is to be governed by the mind and will of Christ. 
However secular his pursuit may be, he is to be a Christian, 
and is to act like a Christian. 

You are an apprentice ; you are working in a joiner's 
shop ; you are a plasterer's journeyman ; you are a tinner ; 
you are a roofer ; you are a stair-builder ; you are a ship- 
joiner ; you are a shoemaker; you are a hatter: you aie. 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 1 5 

perhaps, lower down than what are called the menial occupa- 
tions of life, a street-sweeper, or a boot-black ; but whatever 
you are, unless in some business that you know is wrong, 
you are not so much to say, "How shall I get out of 
this occupation, in order that I may be made a Christian ?" 
as "How, being a Christian, shall I work grace out of this 
occupation ? How shall I be faithful where there is no other 
. reward than the consciousness of doing right ?" 

Exactitude, trustworthiness, where there is no eye but 
God's to see ; the fulfilling of the sense of a true Christian 
manhood in that which is disagreeable — these things consti- 
tute taking up the cross. Parents want to teach their chil- 
dren to take up the cross ; and they say, "Now^ my son, if 
you won't eat any sugar or buttei for six months, in order 
that you may give to the missionaries, that will be taking up 
the cross." Self-denial is taking up the cross ; and if 
there were no other way of getting at it^ I would take 
it up by leaving off butter and sugar ; but it seems to 
me that there are enough crosses to take up without re- 
sorting to such modes as that. When a boy does not want 
to get up in the morning, and he gets up, he takes up the 
cross. When a person is cross before breakfast, that is a 
good time for him to take up the cross, by keeping his tem- 
per. Where one does not like to be punctual in the per- 
formance of duties, or in the keeping of engagements, there 
is a good opportunity for him to take up the cross. When a 
boy sits by another boy that is disagreeable, and he wants to 
"nab" him all the time, he has a good opportunity to take 
up the cross by being kind to him. 

It is better to take up the cross in things that mean 
something. It is better, at home and abroad, in school and 
out of school, in business or pleasure, everywhere, and at all 
times, to hold a good temper, to maintain a true benevolence, 
to keep a warm and glowing sympathy with whatever is 
noble, to be punctual and truthful under all circumstances, 
and to do things that are right because they are right. Men 
oftentimes, feeling it to be their duty to take up the cross, 
seek to find artificial crosses to take up ; but mostly, I think, 
we have crosses enough to take up in subduing the recreancy 



1 6 RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

of our selfish nature to true kindness, and noble enterprise, 
and faithful manhood. 

I will also remark, in connection with this subject of the 
strange and incongruous ethics which men introduce into 
different departments of their lives, that all business should 
be religious. All religion should have in it an element of 
business, that is, of active life. And whether the occupation 
be pleasure or business, it should always be in the service of 
God. 

This would preclude the introduction of different rules 
of right and wrong into different parts of life. Men say that 
you cannot expect one to act in politics as he does in private 
life. Why not ? Are there ten commandments for politics 
which are different from the ten commandments for the rest of 
life ? Was the Sermon on the Mount given for men unknown 
to politics ? It is said that you cannot expect a man to act 
in business as he would in his household. Why not ? Where 
do you find any argument to show that a man cannot carry 
on his business by precisely the same ethical rules that he 
does his household life ? It is claimed by many that you 
cannot expect a man to be in public life what he is in private 
life. Why not? 

I admit that men do have different rules and laws of 
ethical conduct in the different parts of their life ; but I 
affirm that it is wrong. If you ask whether I would not my- 
self act differently, and according to different ethical rules, 
under different circumstances, I reply that I might. Per- 
haps I should go with the multitude. I am as likely to 
break down as you are. But that does not make the adoption 
of different ethical rules right ; nor does it make my instruc- 
tion on the subject less important or less true. 

I say that a man should be the same under all circum- 
stances ; and that which is true, honest, fair in the house- 
hold is true, honest, fair in the store, and in the shop. That 
which is right between man and man in your own neighbor- 
hood is right between man and man in great States. That 
which is proper in private life is proper in public life. No 
man has a right, in his advance to a higher sphere, and to 
more responsibility, to relax his conscience, and take larger 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 1 7 

liberties. The scrupulousness of honor ought to augment in 
proportion to the enlargement of the sphere in which one 
acts. The more complex a man's life becomes, the more rig- 
orous should be his requisition upon his conscience. And 
yet it is not so. But the day will come, it must come, when 
it will be so. 

You cannot be a man of honor, though you tell the 
truth in your household and neighborhood, if you lie without 
scruple in public affairs. It is no more right for a man to 
tell a lie on the stump, or in a newspaper, than it is for him 
to tell a lie in a church. The exigencies of party may 
sometimes seem to make it necessary to misrepresent facts ; 
but it is never right, and, for the matter of that, it is never 
really politic. 

How whole droves, vast swarms of lies, fly in every Presi- 
dential campaign ! More lies were told in the last campaign 
than all the musquitoes in all the dismal swamps in the land. 
And the men that lie night and day, day and night, in poli- 
tics and in public life, are the very men that cry out against 
lying in private life, and in neighborhoods and families. 
They cannot endure lying ! It is shocking to them ! 

Why, we have all been lying. We have all been studying 
expediency for the sake of policy. We have all, out of sym- 
pathy for our companions, or from interested motives, been 
winking at things which will not bear scrutiny. And are we 
the ones to take up a stone and throw it at those who have 
gone astray in this particular ? Are we to heap condemna- 
tion on those who are no more guilty than ten thousand who 
hoot and hound them ? Not that they are not guilty ; but 
it is better, when you see how bad wrong is, how sinful it 
appears, to turn the light of its exposure upon your own 
selves, and see how you look, and what insincerities, and 
stretchings of conscience, and falsehoods, and demoralization 
you are guilty of. 

Not slothful in business of any kind, fervent in spirit 
under all circumstances, and both fervency and diligence in 
such a way as to serve the Lord. 

There is but one other point that I will make in connec- 
tion with this subject, and that is, the mistake and unreason- 



1 8 RELIGION IN BAIL T LIFE. 

ableness of those who propose to themselves to lead a Christian 
life before they die, but who think they cannot for the present 
enter upon it on account of their occupation ; on account of 
their cares ; on account of their interests in business. 

If religion were something apart from daily life, and from 
the experience of men in the discharge of daily duties, there 
might be some validity in this excuse or plea ; but if religion 
is the right conduct of a man, and the right carriage of his 
thoughts and feelings, and if religion aims simply at perfect 
manhood, then everything is religious that tends to build up 
men in perfect manhood. Everything should be relative to 
the great end of building up a perfect manhood in Christ 
Jesus. 

Then why should one wait ? Why should not one accept 
religion without delay? Eeligion is to the soul what health 
is to the body. One does not say in respect to health, " I will 
wait till I have perfected this, that, or the other plan, before 
I recover." On the contrary, he says, " In order that I may 
perfect my plans I will seek health, and strength, and vigor." 
A man's capacity to do business is improved by religion. 
There is nothing that one is called to do in life, which it is 
right for him to do, that he will not do better and easier 
with a conscience void of offense, and a heart at peace with 
God, and a soul in sympathy with divine love. 

It requires no more time for a man to be honest than to 
be dishonest ; to speak a truth than to speak a falsehood ; to 
be gentlemanly than to behave brutally ; to act with polite- 
ness than to act with rudeness ; to carry one's self kindly 
than unkindly. 

Eeligion is right-doing. It is righteousness. It is right 
thought and feeling, and the right application of them to the 
daily duties of life. And it takes no more time to do right 
than to do wrong — often not so much. Collectively and gen- 
erically it is easier to perform even secular duties in a relig- 
ious spirit than to perform those same duties in an irreligious 
spirit. While the lower nature is unchristianized ; while 
pride and selfishness are the prime faculties, the chief motive 
powers, an element of discord is introduced, and the wheels 
turn hard. It takes more labor-pain to act in secular affairs, 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 1 9 

according to the lower spirit of the world, than according to 
the higher spirit of Christianity. 

There is no reason why a man should delay entering upon 
a Christian life. It makes one better in the store ; better on 
the farm ; better in the household ; better as a neighbor. 
Everywhere, religion means rifting the standard of life in this 
world, and the bringing down from the heavenly land a sense 
of sympathy with God. It is bringing the better reason and 
the better moral feelings, instead of the animal side of human 
nature, into the ascendency. ISTo man, therefore, can excuse 
himself from being a Christian man on the ground that he 
has so much to do. No matter if you double and quadruple 
your business, you are to carry it on according to religious 
principles. Whether you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, 
you are to do it to the glory of God. 

I do not ask you to leave off turning the wheel ; to quit 
your business ; to give up your pursuits ; but your industrial 
occupation is to be conducted in a religious spirit. You are 
to be a Christian man where you are, and in the things which 
you are doing. You are to give yourself to your avocation 
with a Christian, not with a selfish, worldly disposition. Cul- 
tivate the grace of God in your heart, that you may discharge 
the duties which belong to your sphere in a better and nobler 
way. 

And do not lose the step. Do not get out of the ranks. 
If you are out of the ranks, and have lost the step, get in 
as soon as possible, and catch up. March steadily and 
firmly along the way of the Lord. The time ought to come 
in every man's experience when the truth should be to him 
as an open book, and when he should say, " From this mo- 
ment I mean to walk after the manner of the Christian 
life. I take the divine ideal, and accept the divine law. 
I put my trust in God, who is a Being of compassion, and 
who is willing to wait for the development of his creatures to 
the stature of men in Christ Jesus. 

We ought to be drilled in our daily and hourly conduct, 
our whole present life ought to be drilled, with reference to 
our future life ; and when that is done, the work will not be 
half accomplished. I believe there will be much to be added 



20 RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

hereafter. Doubtless there will be much to be sloughed off, 
taken away, at the grave ; but that which passes through will 
go on to blossom more largely, and to bear fruit more abun- 
dantly. The true heart will, notwithstanding its many aber- 
rations and retrocessions, have a steady, constant tendency 
upward and onward, every part of the life conforming to the 
glorious ideal of Christian manhood, full of patience, full of 
hope, full of faith, full of love, so that when at last the Task- 
master shall, say, "It is enough," the spirit shall go home, 
and find itself drawn upward, and carried through the air, as 
upon angels' wings, to that land where is perfect happiness. 



RELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 2 1 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMOJN. 

We desire to recognize, O Lord our God, thy mercies to us— the 
bounties of this day, and of every day. Thou hast commanded thy 
sun, and all the bright hours of the day, to serve us. Ever thy mes- 
sengers fly swift hither and thither, by a thousand channels, and 
through a thousand laws, fulfilling thy thought. And so we stand in 
a net-work of divine mercy. Thou dost not need to think, for thou 
hast organized thy thought. Thou hast turned the whole world into 
a vast economy of goodness and of kindness and of mercy. 

Grant unto us, we beseech of thee, that knowledge by which we 
may understand our calling, and all the avenues to thee, and to the 
abundance which thou hast preserved for them that know thee. 

Grant, we pray thee, this evening, that we may draw near to thee 
with thankful hearts, and with confiding spirits. Thou hast been 
our God, as thou wert our fathers' God. Thou hast crowned our 
life with innumerable mercies. We look back to regret much that 
we have done; but thy way has been perfect. We remember in 
how many things we have felt wrong and gone wrong; but thou hast 
never harmed us in thought or deed. Thy hand has never smitten us 
unnecessarily. Thou hast guided us with more tenderness, and borne 
with us more patiently than we could have borne with others. Thou 
hast been more abundant in thy thought than we know how to be. or 
even know how to recognize in thee. Thou art He that doth abun- 
dantly more than we ask or think. 

O Lord, we pray that we may be penetrated by a sense of thy 
presence and goodness; and we beseech of thee that thy goodness 
may lead us to repent — that we may be drawn by love, and not driven 
by fear. Grant, we pray thee, that we may be consecrated to thy 
service in mind, in motive, in disposition, in holy emotions, and may, 
every day, and in all places where duty calls us, worship thee. May 
we know how to serve thee with fidelity, and with all our power. 
We pray thee, open to us the way of duty. May we willingly take 
that which is pointed out to us. Let us do that which lies over against 
us from day to day, patiently, thoroughly, and thus approve our- 
selves the servants of God, — not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, 
serving the Lord. 

Grant thy blessing to rest upon those who are gathered together, 
as they severally need thy mercies. Forgive those who are conscious 
of sin, and mourn before thee. Grant that the dead may bury the 
dead, and that the scenes of yesterday may be hidden out of sight. 
Give force to resolutions of new obedience and higher faithfulness. 
Thou dost not treasure up the past, and why should thy servants? 
We pray that unavailing regrets and sufferings of guilt may be taken 
away by the power of supreme faith and trust in thy mercy. 

Draw near, we pray thee, to those who are suffering in ignorance, 
from the loss of friends or the disturbance of their affections. Will 
the Lord be gracious to them, and gather them in his mercy, and 
teach them how, out of sorrow, to get joy, and grow strong through 
patience. 

We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt bless all those who ask light to 



2 2 tiELIGION IN BAIL Y LIFE. 

guide them in the way of duty, being perplexed and irresolute. 
Grant that they may have discernment imparted to them. May they 
have thy providence to teach them. May they follow thy footsteps. 

We pray that thou wilt bless all who are tempted, and shield 
them from temptation. Succor them, we beseech of thee, in the hour 
of assault. Deliver them from all their adversaries that would destroy 
them. 

We pray that thou wilt bless all those who have wandered far 
from thee, though they were consecrated to thy service from the 
morning of their lives, and were children of prayer and of faithful 
teaching. Will the Lord still bear with them, and bring them back 
to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. 

We pray. O God, that thou wilt go with our thoughts every 
whither. G-ather in thy remembrances those whom we remember ; 
and do exceeding abundantly more for them than we ask or think. 
Grant them thy Spirit, and bless them. 

Accept the praises which we offer to thee, and help us to lift our 
hearts in communion to thee. And may the feelings that we have be 
such as become us in our several spheres and relations ; and may we 
be strengthened by this day's worship ; and may we be stronger and 
better through all the days of the week by reason thereof. And so 
prepare us by the discipline of life, and by its instruction, for that 
blessed day when we shall go forth, once and forever, out of the 
temples built by men's hands, into the great temple above, where, in 
thy presence, amidst joys forever more, our nobler powers shall be 
developed and employed. 

And we will give the praise of our salvation to the Father, the 
Son and the Spirit. Amen- 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we pray for thy blessing to rest upon the word 
spoken. Grant that we may be enlightened in our daily life, and in- 
spired to nobler, activity, and that we may draw argument of devout- 
ness and service from the things that are about us. May we not look 
with wondering eye upon thy truth, and forget what it is, but seek 
to embody it at once in our thoughts and dispositions, and in all the 
way of our life. Deliver us from temptations that are— from our 
adversary, and his wiles. May we be able, with steadfast vigor, to go 
on and know the Lord, whom to know aright is life eternal. And to 
thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. 



FOBELOOKINGS. 



FOEELOOKINGS. 



" There is a way which seemeth right unto a man 5 but the end 
thereof are the ways of death."— Prov. xiv. 12. 



It seems very strange to some that all the dangers of this 
mortal state should seem to be concentrated upon men ; that 
the crown of creation, the sons of God, the heirs of immor- 
tality, should seem to have their lot cast in the midst of cir- 
cumstances which are full of snares and dangers. 

The dangers in all the realms below man are very few, 
and very simple, and very brief in their scope. There is the 
danger of maiming, and the danger of dying, and these are 
all. The great insect tribe finds its way, almost at once, to the 
end for which it was created. The great animal creation, 
that range the air, that swim the sea, that browse through 
the fields, seldom find themselves out of the path. They fol- 
low the law of their nature. They attain to the end of their 
existence. But man, who is called the noblest of God's crea- 
tures, is perpetually stumbling ; is perpetually warped, biased, 
perverted, tangled ; is perpetually plunged to the right or to 
the left ; is perpetually threatened with sudden destructions 
of every kind. He is the sublimest spectacle in his integrity 
and greatness, and the most wretched in his wreck and ruim 
The animals carry but little, and it takes but little to carry 
it. They have slender endowments Their appetites mostly 
guide them. Their instincts are very low and very few. The 
things that they are appointed to do are very few and very 
simple. Man is more complex. He lives in a higher sphere. 
His duties are transcendently greater, more numerous and 
more noble. He is equipped accordingly. He carries a great 

Sunday Evening, December 15, 1872. Lesson: Psalms cxxiii., cxxiv., cxxv. 
hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 199, 180, 50U. 



26 FORELOOKlJmS. 

nature, with great fraitfulness therein. By as much as his 
affairs are multiplied, by so much are his chances of elevation 
increased. He varies most because he has the most power of 
variation, and because the combinations possible to one so 
richly endowed are almost infinite. If there be but three 
letters in an alphabet, the words that can be made out of it 
are very few, and easily computable ; but if there be thirty 
letters, the words that can be made out of it are endless. 
Animals have but few faculties. Man has many. The per- 
mutations and adaptations, the noble attainments or ignoble 
results, are without number. 

All men alike are brought into life in a state of helpless- 
ness and ignorance. It is not true that all men are born equal 
or alike. There are unquestionable hereditary tendencies. 
The habits that have been bred in parents and grand-parents, 
along the ancestral line, are apt to show themselves in the 
children. Peculiar faculties are handed down from genera- 
tion to generation. But all are born alike in this : that they 
have to begin and find out the ways of life. The equipments 
and means by which men may learn these ways are better 
in some than in others ; but all have to learn ; all are obliged 
to gather experience for themselves ; and although the experi- 
ence of parents can guard children so long as they are under 
their authority, and although they may influence them very 
powerfully, it is not possible for any parent to transmit the 
whole of his experience to his children. Neither is it possible 
for any teacher to transmit the whole of his experience to his 
pupils. 

Every man has to find out much for himself. All drill, 
all trial, implies mistake. And so, in the beginning of life, 
where all ways seem almost alike, it is a great mercy that the 
voice of God's Word sounds out to every one, " Beware ; take 
heed to thy steps ; watch ;" that it says to all those who seem 
safe, that they are not alike safe ; that, in the language of 
the text, it says; " There are ways which seem right to men, 
but the ends thereof are death." 

How shall that be ? Why should ways seem right, and 
yet be wrong ? There are many things whose nature does 
not disclose itself at once. There are many things that in 



FORELOOKINGS. 27 

the beginning are apparently harmless, but that, when they 
have had time to grow and come to their full and final na- 
ture, are found to be most dangerous. 

I take it that the young of venomous animals may seem 
beautiful. I know that the cubs of the tiger are charming 
playthings. Very safe, sweet and beautiful are they for our 
children to play with ; but they are not safe playthings for 
children, or for grown people, when they begin to come to 
their full nature. In the beginning, most graceful and 
most winsome ; in the end, most cruel and most bloodthirsty 
are they. And there are many ways of life that are like these 
things. They begin innocent : they end cruel. 

A large part of evil in this world may be said to be excess 
in things good. There can be no question but that economy 
and frugality are virtues ; yet what is the avarice of the miser 
but economy and frugality carried to excess ? In substantial 
quality they are alike. They differ only in the degree of de- 
velopment. There can be no question but that displeasure at 
things evil is good, and that without it a man must be imper- 
fect. The power of indignation is a power of virtue. The 
lack of a sense of revulsion from things wrong is a lack of 
essential manhood. And yet ? although indignation and 
anger, within certain bounds, are virtues, how wretched is 
the man who is given up to temper, not knowing how to con- 
trol it, or to yoke ifc with its true fellows, or to restrain it by 
the presence of the higher moral faculties ! 

If you trace one and another of the great mature powers 
of men, you will find that, if they act thus far, and under 
certain dominant influences, they are beneficial, but that 
otherwise they are vicious. Their danger, in the latter in- 
stance, is commensurate with their excellence in the former. 

So men are often deceived in the ways of life, as they look 
upon them at first, because the point where good breaks off 
and evil begins to be developed is not easily discerned. So 
men enter upon ways that seem right, and are right in some 
degree, and soon find themselves reaping penalties that come 
from transgression. There are ways that seem right to men, 
but are very dangerous. It is hard to convince men that ways 
which seem pleasurable, and the effect of which at present is 



28 FORELOOKINGS. 

pleasurable., are dangerous. This is especially so in the expe- 
rience of men who are conceited; with those who have an 
overweening conception of their own discretion, and of their 
power of throwing off danger when it manifests itself. 

In general, it is true that pleasure is the fruit of obe- 
dience. Botanists tell us that fragrant plants, plants with 
agreeable odors, are usually not poisonous ; and that, on the 
other hand, almost all dangerous plants are fetid in their 
smell. So, in general, it may be said that punishment is an 
indication of transgression, and pleasure is a sign of obedience. 
To a certain degree this is a true diagnosis. Nevertheless, 
it is true that pain sometimes indicates the highest degree 
of virtue. To suffer is to be a man. To suffer was once the 
sign of a God. And those who follow the highest model are 
sufferers voluntarily — are sufferers because they are breaking 
down the law of the lower nature for the sake of the suprem- 
acy of the higher nature. On the other hand, pleasure, 
which in a thousand instances is a sign that men are doing 
right, may, in thousand instances, be a sign . that they are 
beginning to do wrong ; as, for instance, the pleasures that 
beguile their indolence, or the pleasures which they derive 
from the indulgence of their senses. The difficulty of under- 
standing lies in the fact that while men feed the eye, and the 
ear, and the tongue, and the hand — while all the senses are 
in moderate use, giving blandishments and comforts to life 
— they are feeding the sensuous nature. If there were no 
other nature, the indication would be that men were in the 
right path, and that the ends thereof would be pleasure. 

The ox rises betimes in the morning. He is hungry. He 
browses in the field, and is satisfied. He lies down in the 
shade, and is comfortable. In the afternoon he rises again, 
and his appetite is supplied. At night he sleeps. And thus 
he fulfills the whole round of his being ; for there is nothing 
beyond eating and drinking and sleeping for an ox to do to 
satisfy his needs.- He has no conscience, no hope, no faith, 
no intellectual outlook — only a sensuous life. And the quiet 
satisfactions which he derives, are sure indications, so far as 
the mere senses are concerned, that pleasure is not carried to 
excess, and that it is ministering to benefit. As for us, if 



FORELOOKINGS. 29 

there were no years before us ; if youth was to be carried on, 
and nothing was to be built upon it ; if there were no social 
nature, no moral nature, no intellectual nature, to develop, 
and if in development there were no need of instruction, or 
exercise, or suffering, those same indications would be per- 
fectly plain for our guidance. And the young are unable to 
see how there can be danger m pleasures; they say, "Is it 
possible that there can be vice in that which gives quiet and 
content ? Is it possible that joys which are so pleasant that 
by them one whiles away day after day, and beguiles hour 
after hour, can be evil ? Is it possible that that which gives 
sober delight can be dangerous ?" In the beginning it is not ; 
but there is nothing that is so fatal to the ends of life as 
living for the present, for the transient, for anything but 
that which you pitch far forward in life, as the ideal of your 
character. You are to build for the immortality that lies 
beyond this life ; that is why the passing pleasures of sense 
are dangerous — they are luring you away from the pursuit of 
the only pleasure that will stand, in the great life to which 
you are surely hastening. Any person who lives from day to 
day, saying, " These ways are ways of pleasantness, and 
therefore I will dwell in them," needs to be taught that 
they are ways which seem right to men, but whose ends are 
death. 

I have been speaking thus far of evils that are in them- 
selves harmless ; but there is much evil which is known for 
evil as soon as it is seen, but which, before manifesting itself 
openly, runs through what may be called an incubation. 

If you visit the sick-room of one who suffers from scar- 
latina, and the seeds of disease are taken into your own sys- 
tem, you do not know it immediately. You do not know 
it to-day, nor to-morrow, nor this week, nor within ten days 
or a fortnight, perhaps. The evil does not strike like a viper, 
instantly. It lies dormant at first, and takes a long period, 
the length of the period being in proportion to the com- 
« plexity of the fatality. Small evils generally hatch quick ; 
and great evils are a long while hatching. If I plant my 
lettuce-seeds, I shall know in a week whether the man who 
sold them to me cheated me or not — whether he gave me 



30 FORELOOKINGS. 

the kind I wanted or not ; for a few warm nights, and one 
warm shower, and a few coaxing days of sunlight, will bring 
them out. They spring up quickly. But if I bay my young 
fruit-trees from the nursery, and set them out, I must wait 
five or ten years before I can tell whether I have been 
cheated or not. My lettuce comes to maturity in a few 
weeks ; but my fruit-trees do not bear until years have 
elapsed. 

Now, the most inconsequential elements of life are those 
that report themselves quickest, with superficial results ; but 
the most fundamental and radical elements do not report 
themselves until they have had a long period of development ; 
and there are many things that in the beginning seem all 
right and fair, but which, after due development, in the end 
bring death. Watch them ; they will destroy you ! 

It is a fact that men are busy with their fellow-men to be- 
guile them. In this life we act on each other, far more than 
we are acted on by great natural agents. Men in society are 
producing more effects upon each other than the sun, than 
the showers, than the seasons, than the whole world of na- 
ture ; because men apply themselves with such knowledge 
and skill ; because they know how to strike the sensitive 
chords in their fellow-men. The human mind is the most 
powerful instrument that can be employed for the stimula- 
tion of men in society ; for the waking up of everything that 
is in them. 

It may seem strange that God should have created a world 
in which men eat each other up ; but he has. There is 
scarcely a plant known that has not its devourer somewhere 
about it — some insect, or grub, which preys upon its very 
life. There is no animal that has not its parasite — its dan- 
gerous enemy. And there are destroyers in every way and 
walk of life. That combativeness and destructiveness which 
are found throughout the whole of physical nature reproduce 
themselves, and carry on their analogies, in the bosom of soci- 
ety. There are multitudes of men whose trade it is to beguile* 
their fellow-men and destroy them. In many instances they 
are men who study it as an art. They acquaint themselves 
with ethnology and psychology, and know how to touch their 



FORELOOKINGS. 31 

victims ; how to take away fear ; how to inspire hope ; how 
to infuse pleasure ; how to give joy. If men were as active 
and skillful in the art of saving their fellows as they are in 
the art of destroying them, how great a difference would 
there be in the results of living in human society ! 

I sometimes sit, on a summer's day, in a listless mood, to 
see with what exquisite skill a spider has spun his web, and 
fastened it, here to an odorous shrub, there to a twining vine, 
covering the mouth of the bell-shaped morning-glory, with 
all its dew-beaded lines running to the center. In this web, 
which is fair as the gossamer of heaven itself, lies the little 
spinner. The web is beautiful, and it is spun just where the 
gauzy insect will make his thoroughfare, seeking to fly 
through ; and there lies the spinner to catch and to devour. 
He is hateful to me, until I think that a spider has as much 
right to live as I have ; that he has as much right to his flies 
as I have to my chickens ; that God made his stomach, and 
caused him to hunger, and taught him to spin his web, and 
permits him to devour. 

Whatever may be the fact as to whether men were born to 
be omnivorous or carnivorous animals, it is sure that they 
thrive by eating each other, that there is a divine constitution 
in this matter, with regard to men as well as in regard to 
that spider. And though I sometimes strike th^ spider in 
what seems to me to be his nefarious work, I never do it with- 
out rebuking myself, and saying, "He has spun this beau- 
teous web that God taught him to spin, that thus God might 
give him his food in due season." But so I do not feel when 
I look, in society, upon the human spider, that spins his web 
of beauty, and surrounds it with all that is sweet and relish- 
f ul to the senses, and coils himself up in his round hole, or 
at some central point, and seeks his victims to devour them, 
that he may have their gold, and sacrifices them, body and 
soul, for time and eternity, that he may fill his own cruel 
maw. These men who live to seduce the innocent and unwa- 
ry ; these men whose business it is, looking on society, to catch 
those who can be caught easily, who can be beguiled, who 
can be drawn into ten thousand mischiefs — they linger in our 
cities. Multitudes of men are busy throwing up the dust of 



32 FORELOOKIJSiGS. 

magic, through which the young shall see things in false 
colors. They are misinterpreting facts, they* are feeding 
vanity, they are stirring pride, they are firing the imagina- 
tion, they are working up all the lurid passions that they 
may destroy men ; that they may lead them in ways of 
death ; that they may squeeze the bloody wine into their own 
cup. There is not a town or city where some miscreant does 
not lurk, and watch for the souls of men. Oh how, by 
the guileful, are the ways of vice made beautiful and attrac- 
tive ! 

In the western country, where they tole game, they build 
enclosures for wild turkeys? and strew grain under the rails, 
along a deep trench dug for the purpose ; and the turkeys, 
with their heads down, pick up the grain, and, without sus- 
pecting their danger, go into the trap that is set for them. 
It is the nature of a turkey^ when he is caught, to carry his 
head high. He never will stoop except when he is feeding. 
Being in the enclosure, as he will not lower his head, and as 
he cannot rise on the wing unless he has running ground, he 
cannot escape. That is just the way young men are caught. 
They go along feeding, feeding, feeding, carrying their head 
low, and creeping into the enclosure ; and then, being proud, 
and carrying their head high, they cannot escape, and are 
destroyed. 

" There is a way which seemeth right to a man ; but the end there- 
of are the ways of death." 

ii It is certainly one of the most agreeable and charming of 
■ hours when half a dozen young fellows are assembled in a 
little quiet room, where are provided for them, in the most 
attractive manner, the choicest of viands and liquors. What 
can be better than good fellowship, where you can get the 
best of everything to eat, and drink, and smoke ? What can 
be more joyful than for companions to be "hail fellows well 
met " from day to day, from week to week, and from month 
to month ? And as days go on, with the frequent repetition 
of this pleasant indulgence, the taint that lay undeveloped in 
the blood of one of these young men begins to spring up. It 
only needed a spark to set on fire a train that has come down 
from ancestors of several generations back. And he goes on 



JTGREL00K1NG8. 33 

from moderate indulgence to dissipation, and from dissipa- 
tion to intoxication. Another grows careless in his habits. 
Another feels the tedium of hard work, and longs for com- 
panionship, and becomes uneasy, and frequents the saloon 
where he finds agreeable fellowship, and enjoys good drinks, 
and good stories, and stories that are not so good. 

By and by twenty years have gone, and where are these 
young men ? Somebody asks, " Where is No. 1 ?" " Well," 
the reply is, "his health failed, and he went to sea, and died 
on the voyage. Consumption, they said he had." " Where is 
No. 2?" "I do not know. He did poorly in business; 
he was sent on to the plains ; and when I last heard of him 
he was somewhere among the mines, in the mountains." 
"Where is No. 3?" "Oh, he's alive; but everybody that 
knows him wishes he was dead." " Where is No. 4 ?" " Well, 
he is about the only one that escaped. He broke away, 
and got clear. I believe he is now a minister somewhere. " 
" Where is No. 5 ?" "In Greenwood." 

If I knew the names, I suppose I could, from the persons 
that lived in Brooklyn thirty years ago, in easy circumstances, 
and in respectable society, select thousands of young men, 
amiable, well-intentioned, fairly educated, with every busi- 
ness prospect, and about whom was every rational hope, but 
who went down the way of death, for no other reason than 
because they thought it was perfectly safe, as they knew it to 
be perfectly delightful, to indulge in thosp incipient steps out 
of which came intoxication and ruin. I do not know what it 
is that makes young men who hate liquor want to drink. 1 
was myself brought up by a temperate father. I never but 
once saw him touch liquor in all my boyhood ; and then it 
was after he had been sick, and on «t chilly Sunday morning. 
I remember that he went into the closet, and turned out a 
little rum, and drank it. I had heard him preach against 
the use of intoxicating liquors, I had listened to the delivery 
of his six sermons on intemperance, and I knew the history 
of them ; and this act of his surprised me. 

In my youth I was curious to know what wine was like ; I 
was bewitched to taste it ; and I entered into an arrangement 
with George Woodruff for the gratification of that curiosity. 



34 FORELOOKmeS. 

I was to give him the money, he was to buy the wine, and we 
were to go out into the lot to drink it. There was a kind of 
fascination about it, I wanted to see what it was — and I did 
see what it was ! Happily I was not lurf d by it. It was 
not spiced, it was not sweetened ; and it burned and dis- 
gusted me. How many there are that have that same desire ! 
It is contrary to the custom and teaching of their parents 
and homes ; but they want to taste and see ! 

And then, how many there are who have no real appetite 
for wine, but have a sense of shame in not taking it wnen it 
is offered to them, or when they see others take it ! Gentle- 
men drink, and they want to drink. The same is true in re- 
gard to smoking. Oh ! that .there might be a feeling among 
men that to be a gentleman was to be a clean man, and not 
to create a stench ! But our young men do n ? t want to be 
clean ! A young man of a clean mouth, unsm eared by sour 
beer or intoxicating drinks, and unsmoked by tobacco, feels 
uneasy till he can get the nasty smell on him, in his hair, 
through and through his skin, and his whole composition. 
Then he begins to think he is a gentleman. If ill odors make 
gentlemen, I can find in the field the ripest specimens ! 

Besides, how many young persons are fascinated with 
thoughts that I should not call vices, but that are eggs out 
of which will be hatched vices ! 

These ways of indulging the appetites in which there is no 
thrift ; in which there is no promise of good ; in w r hich there 
is an experience the hearing of which ought to make every 
man's ears tingle ; at the entrance of which, if one could only 
hear what is whispered, a voice says, " Those who enter here 
go in the ways of death," — these ways take hold of other 
courses, that I will not name, but that lead to destruction. 

Glittering visions, that make a fairy-scene of life ; temp- 
tations that transform the whole inward experience, and make 
a new history ; false appearances, thst are full of promises of 
triumph — these- carry men steadfastly down to death. Ways 
that are full of pleasantness at the beginning, but the ends of 
which are death, are prepared purposely by men who are 
stewards of the devil, all through our cities and, towns and 
villages. 



FORELOOKIJSTGS. 35 

Even lawful things often cease to be lawful. There are 
no nobler amusements than many of those which have been 
proscribed. They are so struck through with temptations, 
or they are associated with temptations in such a way, that it 
is not safe for men to use them. Perfectly safe it is, for me, 
to go into a ten-pin alley, night after night, though it is no£ 
for many a young man, where there is a bar at one end and 
a fool at the other. What is a better game than billiards ? and 
what is a more dangerous place for a young man than a billiard 
saloon ? In your father's house it is a game of which no one 
need be ashamed ; but in a place where it is just one element 
in a whole nest of temptations, you should be ashamed to be 
found, because it is so near to dangers, and you are so callow, 
so excitable, and so easily drawn into evils. There are many 
games of the household that are in themselves harmless, but 
that on a Western steamboat are harmful. They stand so 
easily and naturally connected with gambling that, though 
they seem innocent in the beginning, in the end they are 
destructive. A young man comes up from an obscure 
quarter, and is introduced into the society of those who are 
the belles and beaux of society. He finds it to be the custom 
among his new associates to play cards for a small stake ; and 
he plays with them, just to make the game interesting. He 
has been cautioned about such things, and he is acting 
against his judgment. He does not like to play for money ; 
but the company that he is in do it, and he waives his 
objections. He acts on the principle that Among Romans 
one must do as Romans do — a maxim which only needs a 
little extension to make it read, Among devils one must do 
as devils do! This principle would make it necessary, if 
he found himself in the company of professional gamblers, 
to become a professional gambler. He has taken down the 
barrier which stood between him and temptation. And so, 
little by little, he goes on. By-and-by he may escape, if he is 
in fortunate circumstance. If, however, he is in other cir- 
cumstances, he will perish. Some will go free ; many will 
be caught. 

But I am not speaking of any particular form of game . 
I am speaking of the general fact that it is dangerous for men 



3ft FORELOOKING& 

to indulge in pleasures which stand near temptations, and 
temptations that are meant to be seductive, and to draw men 
down to perdition. It is dangerous for men to stand in the 
neighborhood of such temptations, I do not care how inno- 
cent the things are per se. It was perfectly innocent for me 
t6 ride on a mule up the sides of Swiss mountains ; but it was 
perfectly provoking the way the mule would take the very 
edge of the path, when there was a precipice three or four 
thousand feet deep below me, so that if the animal had made 
a misstep I would have been dashed to pieces. Thousands of 
men are riding mules — that is, themselves — on the outer edge 
of dangerous paths ; and it will only require one small mis- 
take to throw them to the bottom of a deep precipice. And 
no man has a right to live even a moral life in such a way 
that his path winds around so near a precipice that the 
slightest deviation from the exact course shall destroy him. 

A gentleman in Central JSTew York, who carried on a 
large business, needed funds ; and he endorsed a neighbor's 
name on sundry notes, with which he got money out of the 
bank. The first note became due, and he paid it. He was 
able to meet it, and he knew he should be. The second note 
became due, and he paid it. The third became due, and he 
paid that. Before the next was due he was stricken down 
with a bilious fever. He had the means of paying it, but he 
was out of his head. This fourth note was protested, and 
the fraud was found out when it went to the endorsers. The 
man intended no dishonesty. He was able to meet the notes, 
and he meant to ; and yet, he was caught on the last one. I 
saw him in Auburn. The Chaplain told me there was no 
better man in the prison. (There were a great many men in 
that prison that I thought ought to be out ; and there were 
a great many out that I thought ought to be in.) Now, is it 
safe for an honest man to carry himself along the edge of 
dishonesty, even if his intention is good ? 

I do not know but I am talking to men who have done 
that same thing, and escaped. Because you have escaped, I 
suppose the enormity of the peril does not strike your mind ; 
but if you had had that man's experience of a few years at 
Auburn, I think it would have changed your impressions 



FORELOOKING&. S? 

about it. It is not safe for any man to ride so near the edge 
of disaster that if he makes one misstep it will plunge him 
into ruin. And yet, thousands of young men in our cities 
are doing this all the time; and they leave it to chance 
whether they shall perish or not, 

How few of those that hear me believe this ! But if some 
of you could speak there would be a resonant Amen ! from 
bitter hearts. 

Go with me down to the last estate of the great class 
of ruined men. Question the pauper in the poor-house. 
Interrogate the tenant of the hospital, whose vices have 
brought him there. Ask the man of rotting bones, "Did 
you set out for this ? When you began, was this what 
you meant?" He will reply, with husky voice, "No; it 
seemed all pleasure when I began." There are ways that 
seem right to men, but their ends are death. Ask the bloated 
drunkard, in some interval when his reason is lucid, " Did 
you aim at this ? Is this the profession that you started to 
study ? Is this the result that you meant to attain ? " He 
will say, " No ; I never thought that I should be a drunkard. 
I wish I had known in the beginning what I know now. I 
never would have touched the accursed thing if I had." Ask 
the miserable, kicked-about creature that wants to die, but 
dare not die ; that hates life, but hugs life ; that nobody but 
G-od cares for, or pities, or thinks of — ask him, "In those 
sweet days of dalliance, in those gay rides, in those delight- 
ful self-indulgent ways, in that pleasant indolence, were you 
proposing to yourself to die such a miserable being as you 
are ? Did you seek this ?" " No ! no! " he will say. " The 
way seemed very different when I went into it from what it 
does now." 

So it is that the devil tempts men, by putting flowers all 
around the ways of evil. He makes the first steps in the 
downward path to be most charming. The ground is plushy 
under foot, and sweet and fragrant clusters hang on each side 
and overhead. Step by step, as men go down, birds sing to 
them. And the way is delightful to them. But as they pro- 
ceed, the road grows more and more precipitous. And yet, 
they think that a little farther on they shall strike fields of 



38 FORBLOOKIW&S. 

charming experience. But alas ! a little farther down, and a 
little farther down, the way is more and more barren. And 
if they turn to go back, there are minions of the devil that 
urge them forward, and drive them down to the very end. 

The last ways of wrong-doing are ways of unutterable sor- 
row and regret. 

T need not draw out this matter farther. Let me say, first, 
m closing, that it is a great danger to any young man to be 
conceited in his own wisdom and in his own strength. You 
think you know better what will suit you than anybody else 
can know for you. You do not, and you are a fool for think- 
ing so. Saith the Word of God : 

" Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of 
a fool than of him." 

There are certain ways - that experience has shown to be 
safe ; there are certain other ways that universal experience 
has shown to be dangerous ; and there are other ways still that 
experience has shown to be fatal ; and you cannot, in your 
early and inexperienced youth, do anything so safe as to ad- 
here to the ways which have been tried, and have been proved 
to be without disaster or danger. Those who think they have 
a strength and a wisdom which others have not, and act ac- 
cordingly, perish because they are fools. And thus thinking 
and acting are the very infatuation of folly. 

Lastly, let me say that, as no man is safe who leans upon 
his own wisdom — certainly not if contrary to the instruction of 
his elders, and the experience of the community around about 
him — so no man is safe who does not give heed to the Word 
of God, and to the presence of the Lord. You are perfectly 
safe so long as you live with a consciousness that God looks 
upon you ; so long as you have the fear of the Lord, which 
is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of God, which is the 
end of wisdom. Every man needs that influence which is 
shed upon him .by the consciousness, " Thou, God, seest me." 
Are you willing, from day to day, to open what you have been 
thinking during the day to the sight of God ? Are you will- 
ing, every day, to open in the presence of God what you have 
done ? I have known cases in which men have required 
themselves never to say anything, anywhere, that they would 



FORELOOKINGS. 39 

not be willing to say in the presence of their mother. A great 
many men's habits of speech would be changed if they should 
adopt that rule. Many men will say things out of the family 
that they would not dare to say in it ; and it is a shame. I 
think that if every young man would say, from day to day, "I 
will put nothing into this day that I would not be willing that 
God should look on, and nothing that God disapproves ; I will 
humble myself, and cleanse my ways," it would be the most 
wholesome thing he could do. You need something more 
than your own strength, and the influence of those around 
about you. You need the conscious presence of your father's 
God and of your mother's God. Then, when you are tempted 
you will have a shield. Then, when you slide there will be a 
power to lift you up. Then, experience will not be final dis- 
aster. Then, there will be a prophecy of good that will go 
with you. Then, little by little the ways of wisdom will be- 
come ways of pleasantness, and all her paths will be peace, 
to you. 

Let me speak, to night, to hungry ears. Let me speak, 
not to those who have well nigh gone through life, but to 
those who are beginning life. Let me speak to those who are 
just throwing out the seeds which shall by and by bring forth 
their harvests. I beseech of you to throw good seed into good 
soil. Throw not out from your hand the cockle, the chess, 
and the chaff. Throw not out the thistle and the thorn. 
Having sown good seed in good soil, commend it to God, and 
leave it in his care. Live by his commandments. Take his 
word as the man of your counsel, and your guide. Let philos- 
ophy say and do what it will, when it comes to practical, every- 
day life, there is no book that is so safe for a man to go by as 
the Bible, so full and so wonderful in its recorded experience, 
searching the heart, penetrating the life, inspiring men by the 
noblest motives and to the noblest exercises, and bringing 
down around about them the truths of the divine presence, so 
that the whole atmosphere that envelopes them is divine. 

I commend you to the Word of God. I commend you to 
that dear God from whom it came. I commend you to the 
hope of a virtuous future in this life, and to immortality and 
glory in the life to come. 



40 FORELOOKINGS. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

O Lord, thou art most merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and 
abundant in kindness, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. 
Though thou wilt by no means clear the guilty, though thou wilt not 
suffer transgression to seem like righteousness, yet thy heart is toward 
those who transgress, to deliver them out of their sin, if they turn 
unto thee with sincere penitence ; and thou dost help those that de- 
sire help ; and thou dost succor the poor and needy whei they cry 
unto thee. Since the ages began, thine ear has drank in the cry of 
the distressed from out of this world, that hath not ceased to ascend. 
Thou art a merciful, a long-suffering and a patient God; and thou 
hast delivered men innumerable, and art delivering. Thou art the 
Refuge from all that judge; from all that pursue; from all that hate; 
from all that strike ; from all that seek evil. 

We rejoice that we may draw near to thee with unspoken thoughts 
— with feelings that will not be revealed in words. We rejoice that we 
may open our souls before thee. We rejoice that as the sun shines 
upon the earth, so thou dost shine upon our hearts. And we beseech 
of thee, O God, that thou wilt grant to every one of us a realization 
of the fact that we are open before Him with whom we have to do. 
May we confess our sins, and forsake them; and turn unto God with 
a full assurance that he forgives, and that he helps. And grant, we 
pray thee, that we may be renewed, by the power of hope and faith, 
with new life. Fill us, by thy Spirit, we pray thee, with a new pur- 
pose, with new zeal, with new obedience, adding to the past whatever 
is good, and taking away from it whatever is evil. Grant that we may 
reach forth toward a better manhood with ardor, with patient per- 
severance, and with a full assurance of hope. 

We pray that thou wilt draw near to all who are in trouble ; to all 
on whom thy hand rests heavily ; to all who are filled with sorrow 
and darkness ; to all who are friendless ; to all who are out of the 
way ; to all who have stumbled, and cannot rise again ; to all who sit 
in the region and shadow of death ; to all who are in prison. Open 
the prison-doors, thou Ambassador! Come, and save men from the 
bondage of sin! 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt revive thy work in the hearts 
of thy people, that they may be more and more zealous in making 
known the true God. Grant that the spirit of Christ may be more 
and more largely diffused among thy people, that they may learn 
what is the power of life; and may all of us take up, more and more, 
the cross of Christ, and look upon it as a symbol of thy suffering. 
May we learn to suffer, as thou didst and dost suffer, for others. May 
we learn self-denial, and self-sacrifice for others. And we pray that 
we may be built up therein. With all humbleness of mind, and with 
all sense of unworthiness to do any part of the wor^ of God's great 
field, may we persevere, not with the weapons of this world's war- 
fare, but with spiritual weapons, in the work of overcoming evil ; and 
may we pursue that which is good. 

We pray for the young, who are adventuring, and whose minds 
are open like the ground, that there may be given them such a knowl- 



FORELOOKINGS. 41 

edge of God, and such ways of life, that they may cleave to that 
which is good. And grant, O God, that the seed which brings 
destruction may be taken away from them, and that they may trust 
in the word of the Lord, and that they may have thy presence, thy 
Spirit, and the power of the Holy One, evermore. 

Deliver, we beseech of thee, any who are wandering. Bring them 
back before it shall be too late. And grant that there may be raised 
up round about the young in these great cities those who shall love 
them, and watch for their souls. We pray that those who seek their 
harm, and guilefully spread snares before them, may be driven away, 
and have their evil devices brought to naught. 

We beseech of thee that there may be a reformation of morals in 
our midst, and that men may do evil no more. Throughout this land 
spread the renovating and saving influence of the truth as it is in 
Christ Jesus. May men feel the pardoning power of Jesus, repent, 
and turn unto him willingly. May they be converted, and begin a 
Christian life. 

All through our land may manhood thrive. May the truth as it 
is in Jesus be the food of the soul. May men grow larger and larger 
in things right. Let thy kingdom come everywhere. Pity the nations 
that sit in darkness. Spread the truth abroad. Let it set men free. 
And bring in that glorious day of prediction when all the earth shall 
see thy salvation. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises, ever- 
more. Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMOK 

Almighty God, we pray that thou wilt grant thy presence and 
thy blessing upon the words of truth that have been spoken, not 
according to the feebleness and imperfection of the offering, but 
according to thine own great goodness. Multiply the benefits thereof. 
We pray that those who listen may listen for their life. Wilt thou 
rouse the consciences of those who are going down in the way of evil. 
Grant that they may not come to a seared conscience ; to a perverted 
understanding ; to a deceitful heart ; to ways of guile. Grant that they 
may come back to simplicity, and truth, and self -denial, and courage. 
And we pray, O Lord, that thou wilt ward off the dangers that sur- 
round the young; and smite the jaws of those that would devour 
them. Grant that the snares and pitfalls for the unwary may fail. 
May those that have been caught, but are not carried far away, be 
recovered. And let not those who are struggling to reach the shore 
be caught by the undertow, and swept helplessly out upon the vast 
sea. May they be rescued. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt 
glorify thy name by all the works of grace that thou shalt do. And 
may we behold, and cooperate, and rejoice. And finally bring us all 
safely to that land where is no sin nor temptation, but perfect purity 
and perfect joy for evermore. And to the Father, the Son and the 
Spirit, shall be praises, forever. Amen 



HEROISM. 



HEROISM. 



I wish to use the two incidents, recorded in the 12th and 
14th chapters of Mark respectively, as the basis of my dis- 
course this evening. In the 12th, beginning with the 41st 
verse, we find the following : 

"And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the 
people east money into the treasury : and many that were rich cast 
in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in 
two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his dis- 
ciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor 
widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the 
treasury : for all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her 
want did cast in all that she had, even all her living." 

The other passage I read to you in the opening service. 

It is the scene of the anointing of Jesus, preceding his arrest, 

in which he declares, 

" She hath done what she could : she is come aforehand to anoint 
my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this 
gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that 
she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." 

It is somewhat remarkable that fche two instances which 
have been singled out by our Saviour for such conspicuous 
mention and honor were those of women. You will observe, 
too, that in both instances the act itself was, comparatively 
speaking, humble. 

In the one case the woman cast in two mites, or a far- 
thing. This was the smallest coin known to the Komans. 
It was equal to the fraction of our smallest coin. Therefore it 
w r as exceedingly small. But then, it was her whole. It was all 
that she had. So, relatively to that which she had, she gave 
more than the rich men who were casting in golden talents. 
And Christ makes mention of her case. He holds it up to 
memory. 

In the other case, the woman in a transport of love drew 

Sunday Evening, April 20, 1873. Lesson : Mark xiv. 1-9. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection): Nos. 639,907,1244. 



46 HEROISM. 

near and anointed the Saviour with precious ointment. The 
gift conferred was not so great, though it was precious spike- 
nard. The anointing was in accordance with the manner of 
the East, though it would not be suited to our day and time. 
It then conformed to luxury and taste, and was a mark of 
love and honor. She sacrificed no inconsiderable value to 
express her affection for Jesus, which, owing to her circum- 
stances and relations and position in society, she could make 
known in no other way. 

The apostles, or some of them, made this a matter of 
measurement according to the ordinary rules of property. 
They weighed her heart in the scales, and condemned it. 
She loved ; and sweet as was the spikenard, the odor, after 
all, in the esteem of Jesus was of the heart and not of the 
garden. And when they condemned her, saying, " This might 
have been sold for so much, and given to the poor," he re- 
buked their old-time economy, their misplaced benevolence, 
and declared that this woman had acted nobly. The desire 
of an overburdened heart to express itself, the spontaneous 
ebullition of the best feelings, is praiseworthy ; and there is 
nothing too costly for the expression of the most valuable of 
all things in this world — disinterested love. 

And so, among the heroes of the past, you must reckon 
these two — the nameless widow, and Mary of Bethany. What 
the poor widow did was to give about half a cent ; but then, 
heroism is not measured by the square foot, nor by the 
pound, vf aat the other woman did was to express, by an 
appropriate symbol, that which the proprieties of life forbade 
her to express in any other way — the depth and strength and 
intensity of her affection for Jesus. 

These two personages stand registered in the memorials of 
the past. Their portraits are painted on the canvas of time. 
Their statues stand in this niche of the temple of God's Word, 
and will stand there for all. the ages that are to come. And 
from these instances I propose, to-night, to speak on the sub- 
ject of heroism. 

I need not say, after this beginning, that heroism is not 
that alone which is most conspicuous ; that it is not that 
which most attracts men's eyes. I need not say that there is 



HEROISM. 47 

a great deal of unregistered heroism ; that there is a great 
deal of heroism, which is not luminous to men's eyes because 
it is not performed in public, or because mankind are to such 
an extent yet physical that they require some outward exposi- 
tion to impress them with any sense of heroism. These two 
women were heroes ; and there is a large following of them 
which is unnoticed by the multitude. There are many heroes 
who are not known as such except by God. 

What is heroism, then ? It is the sacrifice of one's self to 
some moral sentiment. It is the sacrifice, the risk, the put- 
ting in peril, of the animal man. It is, if need be, the sac- 
rifice of our lower life for the sake of evincing our faith in 
our higher life. There is no such thing as heroism which 
runs from good to bad. Heroism must always run from the 
lower toward the higher. It is some expression by man of 
the value which he puts upon action higher than ordinarily 
belongs to the activities of men. Therefore, it must be so 
marked as to impress men who behold it and recognize it 
with a sense of its elevation. All men can perform common 
duties ; but when the duty is so high or so difficult that al- 
most no one performs it, and some one appears who reaches 
out to it, and achieves it with some loss, or risk of loss, he is 
a hero. Any man is a hero who can do, and does do, what 
the million cannot do. Heroism is making appear in your 
life or conduct eminent traits — traits that range far higher 
than the ordinary level. 

So, then, heroism in one age may not be heroism in an- 
other age. It is not absolute : it is relative to the public 
sentiment, to the state of development, and to the capacity 
of the man who performs the act, or undergoes the suffering. 

In the earlier periods of the world heroes were largely 
they who pursued great physical ends, or achievements, for 
some higher reason than simply their own selfish gratifica- 
tion ; and yet, there is a great difference between the heroic 
actions of those periods and the heroic actions of the present 
day. For example, Samson was a hero of the coarse mold. 
He belonged to the race which, in Greek mythology, had its 
Hercules, and in other mythologies had its giants, mostly 
cruel and despotic, but in some instances patriotic. Samson 



48 HEROISM. 

was an instance of intense patriotism ; although he was 
coarse, unmannerly, and anything but a type such as we 
should now set up for an exemplar. He was willing to put 
himself in peril, and to achieve results for the sake of his 
people, by the sacrifice of his own self ; and at last he yielded 
up his life for their sake. And yet he was not so heroic as 
David was in a much milder way. In doing what he did, he 
was warlike and heroic ; but David, returning from no vic- 
tory, was a greater hero. Hated and hunted of Saul, he 
went to the camp of Saul, and took a spear, and a cruse of 
water from his head, sparing him ; and then, going to a dis- 
tant hill, he roused the king to the fact that his life had been 
in his hands, and that he had spared him. And when David 
hid in a cave, and Saul came and was in his power again, he 
cut a piece from his robe and let him go in safety, and after- 
wards sent it to him, again sparing his life. There was hero- 
ism in these things. Even in our moderation we may be 
heroic. 

It is not, then, doing great things that constitutes hero- 
ism ; it is not doing brilliant things : it is doing things 
which indicate an appreciation of a higher manhood. It is 
an impulse, a special trait, a manly act, which is not current 
in the time in which one lives. He who only does what 
others do cannot be a hero. The things which made another 
man a hero in some age that has gone by do not make you 
one in the present age ; because you live upon a higher plane 
than he did. We are so educated and trained now that 
almost everybody does things which once made men heroic. 
In an age when, in Sparta, stealing was a virtue, not to steal 
was very heroic — and I do not know but it would be still in 
our cities, though not in country villages and places where 
temptations are less strong than in the Custom-House, in 
the Revenue service, and in places of public trust. 

Heroism may be overt and conspicuous, or it may be hid- 
den and obscure. I am glad to believe that it is far more 
abundant in its obscure and latent relations than in its open 
disclosures. All overt heroism, however, comes from a latent 
state which predisposes to it. No man will ever be made a 
hero on the side of benevolence who is continually training 



HEROISM. 49 

himself to selfishness. Occasions for the exhibition of be- 
nevolence come and go ; but the regnant disposition domi- 
nates. He who is mean will not be noble on occasion. He 
who is stingy will not be generous on occasion. He who is 
cowardly will not be courageous on occasion. There are men 
who upon occasion are brave even unto death, though they 
never manifested such bravery before, and never had an op- 
portunity to manifest it ; but it was in them. The occasion 
did not create it. If men are to be heroes when the time of 
emergency comes, they must be heroes before it comes. If a 
man goes out hunting, and brings down game right and left, 
his success is evidence that he has had experience in hunting. 
Occasions come quick and go quick, and he who would seize 
them must have that heroic impulse or tendency which only 
comes through living. It is not an accident, nor an inspira- 
tion from the gods. Where it is shown, it belongs to a man, 
and it merely flashes out upon occasion. Occasions, then, do 
not make heroes ; they merely develop them. 

If men who are living lives of self-indulgence, whose acts 
always point centerwise, who are forever attempting to help 
themselves, working after a very mean and narrow pattern of 
manhood — if such men suppose that under any conditions 
they could be heroic, they impose upon themselves. Men 
must first be heroic in silence, in darkness, in obscurity, and 
unpraised, if they would be heroic under other circum- 
stances. Indeed, it is hard to be believed that men are 
heroic when they know they are to be praised for what they 
do. It is not the general who knows that the nation's plaud- 
its await him, that he is to stand in the history of the world, 
and that all the perils which he passes through are to be 
chronicled — it is not he that is the more heroic : it is the 
poor soldier who is without a name, who knows that he shall 
probably fall in battle without a record, and who yet puts his 
life in peril for the sacred cause of his country ; for one buys 
his praise, and can afford to run some risks that he may earn 
that celebrity which is sweet to him, while the other earns 
nothing external. The latter acts upon the higher principle, 
and shows a more heroic element than the former. 

Men may be heroic in a bad cause as well as in a good 



50 HEROISM. 

cause ■ for heroism does not measure itself altogether by ex- 
ternal circumstances. If it did, there would be no heroes 
until the perfect period came when men acted from exactly 
right conceptions of moral character, and from the noblest 
examples of manhood. But we must take men in their im- 
perfections, and measure them as creatures that are of neces- 
sity imperfect ; and therefore their imperfections must not 
weigh against them. So, then, men may be all wrong, they 
may be seeking wrong ends, and still they may be acting he- 
roically. 

When, in the great struggle which we waged for liberty — 
for the universal cause of the working man — we were blindly 
and unconsciously asserting the rights of the working man of 
the world, and of all time, there was a sort of dim instinct, 
rather than of luminous intelligence of that fact, in En- 
gland ; and although the stoppage of cotton almost laid the 
English ports bare, and well-nigh stopped all their mills, and 
tnrew thousands and thousands of spinners out of work, they 
yet refused to give their countenance to those who favored 
slavery, and stood simply starving, and gave their sympathy to 
those who were for our Government, because it meant liberty 
to all men. Thus they stood through long years ; and no ef- 
forts to persuade them, or intimidate them, or bribe them, or 
natter them, or seduce them, could avaii. And I say that 
there have been few more striking instances of heroism than 
that quiet, unboastful, and almost unregistered, patience with 
which, during our strife, the working men in England stood 
by us for the sake of the principle which we represented. 

There are a great many men who are well-nigh starving 
for another principle ; and according to the measure of their 
intelligence they are heroic ; but they are working in a bad 
cause. " Strikes" are not wise. They are not the roads to 
victory. These men think they are, and therefore they inau- 
gurate them. They believe in them as a way by which, in the 
long run, working men may be raised to ampler means, to more 
culture, and to greater power of manhood. Seeking that end 
they have mistaken the road ; and they are seeking it, many 
of them, with great suffering. It is not an easy thing for a 
man to hear his children cry for bread. It is not an easy 



HEROISM. 51 

thing for a man to see his raiment, and that of his dear ones, 
growing ragged, not knowing where to obtain a change. 
It is not an easy thing for a man to behold the summer com- 
ing and going away, and to be idle, when his household are 
dependent upon his hand for bread. And I quite admire the 
heroism of many and many a man whose ways are wrong, and 
who will certainly do harm and obstruct the elevation of 
those whom he means to help. 

It is not by mechanical instrumentalities that labor can be 
elevated and made more respectable. This must be done by 
making it more intelligent, and by imbuing it with morality, 
with fidelity, with sagacity, with industry, and with thrift of 
the noblest kind. It is through the development of man- 
hood, and not through external oppugnation, that the labor- 
ing classes are to rise to a proper position in society. Never- 
theless, they think that the road which they are traveling is 
the right one, and they suffer in a way which shows that they 
are heroic. I think, oftentimes, that we see, amidst their 
many faults — their carelessness of morals, their waste of time, 
and their spendthrift habits — a willingness to suffer, and to 
suffer for others, which is heroic. 

I do not know that there is on earth a more pitiable spec- 
tacle than that which we see in South Carolina to-day. She 
was the proudest State that there ever was in this nation. In 
many respects she was the richest, and the most politically 
influential. She inaugurated those ideas which first led to 
disaster, and then to the cleansing of the continent, under 
the guidance of a good Providence. I can hardly conceive of 
principles more at variance with what we now regard as true 
principles, than those which were taught in her academies 
and colleges and other institutions of learning. The people 
of that State were true to those principles by reason of their 
faith in them. To them they were true, though to us they 
were false. They risked everything that they had in life, and 
lost. Thev have sacrificed their political power. Their 
wealth has been swept from them. Before, their territory 
was as the Garden of Eden ; but now, it is as desolate as the 
wilderness. They have seen their children laid in the grave. 
Household after household, by hundreds and thousands, that 



52 HEROISM. 

used to feel no want, now almost beg for bread. And yet 
their poverty does not breed remorse, nor will they take back 
one particle of faith in the rectitude of their cause. They 
neither mourn over their loss, nor repine at their condition. 
They see their slaves exalted to be their masters, and they 
stand patiently taking the lot which is meted out to them. 
They bravely bear up under deprivation of everything that 
man holds dear. And I think that the times of excitement 
are so far gone that you will at least sympathize with me in 
the thought that though they were engaged in a bad cause, 
there was a heroism among them which we might well admire 
and profit from. 

There may be heroism, then, in this mistaken world, 
where men have got into the wrong path. Men sometimes 
enact in evil ways deeds which are more heroic than acts 
which others perform in right channels. It is the degree of 
self-denial, of forgetfulness of one's own interest, of con- 
tempt of outward and lower things in reaching after some- 
thing regarded as nobler and better, which one exhibits — it 
is that which makes heroism. 

It would not be right nor politic for me now, perhaps, 
when the public indignation is against the Indian, to say that 
there is heroism in him ; but there is. Not that there is not 
meanness, truculent cruelty, animal revenge, almost every 
vice that degrades men, and that buries the soul under the 
shadow of darkness itself, in his nature ; nevertheless, there 
are some Indians who rise superior to the average of their 
fellows, and who really love their nation, and are standing 
for what they regard to be noble, and in a way that shows 
that they are heroes, though darkly, and in a narrow limit. 
Let us not wholly despise them. I am one of those who are 
always happy to find in the bad something better than men 
expect. I cannot bear to see human life go out without a 
spark. Therefore, it touched me when I was told, by some who 
escaped, that in such tremendous trouble as that which was 
experienced in the San Francisco steamship, when she went 
down, there went down on her a multitude of courtesans, and 
that in the hour of their last distress, they were brave, and 
calm, and disinterested, helping each other, and helping 



HEROISM. 53 

others. It brought tears to my eyes to think that when, 
after living in such terrible degradation as they had, they 
came at last to the end of life, they might round up their 
guilty circle with one heroic hour, and die bravely and dis- 
interestedly. 

It is for the interest of virtue, and it is for the in- 
terest of manhood, that we should recognize all instances 
of heroism as fast as they come to the surface ; I will not 
say reward them ; for you never can reward a man for a 
heroic act. The attempt to do that would spoil it. Dis- 
interestedness is never exhibited for a prize. If you pay for 
it, you bring it to an end. But you may admire it ; and it is 
always fair to break the alabaster box of pure and precious 
ointment on the heads of those who are admirable. That 
does not hurt anybody but the spectators who do not get it. 
It is not best that we should undertake to repay heroism ; 
but we ought to honor it. 

There were a multitude of heroes that appeared upon the 
scene when the steamer Atlantic went upon the rock. One 
name stands out conspicuous (and I am not sorry that he be- 
longed to my own profession) — the name of the Eev. Mr. 
Ancient, who, under circumstances that would daunt and that 
did daunt professional seamen, on a raging sea, when storm 
was in the air, so that there was apparently no prospect of 
withstanding the violence of the ocean, went out in a boat 
undaunted, and unclasped a man who was bound to the 
rigging, and brought him in. That was heroic. The man was 
no relation of his ; and how easy it would have been for him 
to have said, " Alas ! that the providence of God should make 
it impossible that I should follow the dictates of my heart ! 
The sea forbids, and the storm forbids." But no ; his heart 
was stronger than sea or storm; and he said, "What is my 
life worth ? it is good for nothing but such things as this. " 

That man was divinely ordained. Before any man's hands 
were placed on him, God had placed his hand on him. And 
his ordination was justified in that way. And so his name 
stands upon the roll of honor. 

Would you have done what he did ? Where are our 
heroes ? You admire his conduct ; and you will, perhaps, 



54 HEROISM. 

years hence, looking into the fire as the coals and embers die 
out, rehearse to yonr children or others the story of this 
event ; but where is the deed in which }^ou will act the part 
of a heroic deliverer ? What are you doing now ? Are you 
delivering anybody ? Are you sacrificing yourselves for any- 
body? Are you living so as to make your life serve any- 
body ? Are you refusing ease or comfort in order that others 
may have it ? There is some stormy sea or other on which 
he who would venture may venture. If you would be he- 
roic, there are chances enough for you to show your hero- 
ism. 

It is proposed to raise a purse to send to Mr. Ancient. I 
have no objection to that ; I presume a pastor settled on that 
coast is not oppressed with his revenue ; and yet, I should be 
sorry to have him think that this was the only reward that 
we have for him. His name we will teach to our children. 
It will be inscribed in our literature. As Mary, who broke 
the alabaster box on the head of Jesus, has been heard of 
wherever this gospel is preached, and will be to the end of 
time, so, all uncalculating and all unexpccting, he did, in an 
hour of storm and peril, an act which has made him dear to 
the race of mankind. How sudden ! How easy ! And yet, 
how few know how to do the thing, because so few know how 
to forget self, and mount up into that noble manhood in 
which is all self-denial and cross-bearing, even to the laying 
down of life. 

Another one, nearer to our door, should be mentioned. 
I know not his name, but it will be known ; I mean the 
heroic engineer of that ill-fated train which was wrecked near 
Stonington. The bridge was swept away, and the train 
leaped down the black chasm at night. He, standing 
upon the engine as it dashed forward with all speed, un- 
questionably saw, by the headlight, before he got to the 
place, that the bridge was gone. And yet, he did not seek 
to save himself ; for in the morning he was found upon the 
engine, with one hand upon the lever, and the other on the 
brake. He saw the danger ; but instead of leaping from the 
train, he stood at his post, and rushed into the arms of death, 
attempting to save the charge which had been committed to 



HEROISM. 55 

him. He was a hero, though he did not know it. He did 
not perform that deed of heroism for the sake of haying men 
say that it was heroic, but because he felt that it was his 
duty — because he remembered those who were on the train 
behind him. So he died ; but being dead he lives. Such 
men should not be forgotten. 

But we ought not to commit the mistake of supposing 
that only these disclosed instances are heroic. I believe that 
that there is no great shop, or great manufactory, in which 
there are not many men who are acting heroic parts. I often 
think that it is the obscure heroes that we should take the 
most pains to recognize. In many and many a house wheie 
there is great prosperity and abundance, where there is re- 
finement and intelligence, where there is comfort and good 
citizenship, and where there is piety, there are heroes ; but 
they are not always in the parlor. Heroes there are good ; 
but there are many servants in the kitchen who are heroic, 
and who are spending all that they can earn for the sake of 
others. Their slender wages are laid up. They deny them- 
selves the comfort of dress, and a thousand other comforts ; 
and through years and years they send back their wages to 
their old fathers and mothers in Ireland, or in Germany. 
There is many a girl who has wrought for ten years to bring, 
one by one, all her brothers and sisters from the land of pen- 
ury to the land of plenty, living patiently, and often with 
much misuTiiers tan ding and much blame. Go to the banks, 
go to the offices where exchange is bought and sold, and trace 
the stream of benefaction which goes from the hands of the 
hard-working poor. There is a track across the sea which 
all waves and storms cannot wipe out, which God's eye fol- 
lows, and along which the poor take their pittance, their two 
pence, their farthing, their mite, as it were, and send it 
across the sea. 

We do something for the poor and suffering in winter. 
Some men on the Heights pay down a hundred dollars to the 
Society for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor — 
some fifty dollars, some twenty-five, some ten — men whose 
income is anywhere from five to fifty thousand dollars ; and 
when they have done that they think they have done their 



56 HEROISM. 

duty ; but God, who looks on, says, " Their hundreds of dol- 
lars are nothing. They give of their abundance. They 
never feel what they give. It is a mere pinch from the loaf, 
doled out to those who are below them." But there are 
those in the lower spheres of life who give all their living. 
The last shall be first, and the first last. 

It was a good thing for Mr. Ancient to risk his life for a 
few hours ; but there are heroes greater than he, who risk 
their lives for days, and weeks, and months, and years. 
Among the generals and soldiers of the Crimean war were 
many heroes ; but Florence Nightingale, who devoted herself 
to the relief of the sick and wounded in hospitals, showed 
greater heroism than they. There is many a woman who is 
not placed in household relations, who has heroically fore- 
sworn her own advancement, and who has dedicated her life 
to some sister. There is many a man who says, " It is not 
for me to seek my own pleasure. My widowed mother must 
not want bread ; and though I should earn nothing with which 
to set myself up in life, neither she nor her children shall 
know diminution or want as long as I live." And so, though 
naturally he would have chosen his mate, and gone into 
housekeeping, as circumstances are such that both cannot 
be done, he stands in virginal heroism all his life long. I 
have known men who worked hard in Wall street, on 
whom busy tongues whet themselves sharp, and who, perad- 
venture were shark-like in many things, but whose only mo- 
tive was to bless those to whom their hearts clung. It was 
love, after ail, that was at the bottom of their action, and that 
inspired them. 

There are many who go into hospitals. There are many 
who dedicate themselves to the services of humanity among the 
poor. There are many who deprive themselves of comforts 
day and night for the good of those who are around about 
them. And they exhibit a heroism that is worthy of admira- 
tion and imitation. I tell you, it is this obscure heroism, from 
day to day, from month to month, from year to year ! that 
Jesus looks upon, saying, " You never sigh that others may 
not sigh, and remain unrecognized. You never suffer to save 
somebody else from suffering, that God does not know it. You 



HEROISM. .57 

never put in peril anything that is dear to you for the sake of 
blessing others, that you are not in the sight of God enrolled 
among the heroic. He that will find his life shall lose it. He 
that is willing to lose his life for the sake of some truth, some 
duty, some benevolence, shall find it with an everlasting find- 
ing." 

So, then, do not think that conspicuity is necessary to 
heroism. Only now and then is a gold vein found and brought 
to light ; but the mountains are full of gold veins. Only now 
and then is a pearl found and worn ; but there are myriads of 
pearls hidden in oysters beneath the waters of the sea. And 
there are many heroes obscured by coverings as homely as the 
oyster; and when God makes up his jewels, not one of them 
shall be left out. Do not say, ' ' Nobody will know it, if I am 
heroic." Yes, Somebody will know it whose touch is immor- 
tality, whose love is better than the ownership of the round 
world, and who has in reserve for you a life higher than that 
of the body, nobler than that of the flesh. 

Be more disinterested, then, than society requires you to 
be. Be more virtuous than the laws require you to be. Do 
not be afraid to spend yourself. Do not hesitate to risk your- 
self. Do not shrink from treading on principle. It will 
carry you, as a bridge, over the deepest and darkest chasm 
that exists. Trust truth, and purity, and integrity, and be- 
nevolence. Give yourself to them. Throw yourself impetu- 
ously, enthusiastically, into them. And do not wait to see if 
anybody sees you. Do not care what anybody says. Be un- 
conscious, so far as men are concerned ; for you may be sure 
that he who registered the act of the poor widow in the tem- 
ple, and who registered the example of Mary of Bethany, and 
held them up to everlasting remembrance, will see and re- 
member every good deed that you perform, and will reward 
you in the other life with a remuneration transcending all 
thought of pleasure or profit on earth. 



58 HEROISM. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON". 

We rejoice, our Father, in the faith of immortality. We look 
upon life, and are glad of the joys which it possesses. And. yet, when 
it is fullest of joy, how much of sorrow is there in it! How, as we 
grow in years and in knowledge, are we made to feel the sinful- 
ness and the suffering of men! How poor is the race in virtue, in 
intelligence, in all culture! How are men degraded as the very 
beasts of the field! or, how are they, as the beasts, warring, and 
rending each other! How are they full of imperfection, and all 
manner of violent transgression! The whole earth doth groan and 
sigh. Even where the light of thy truth hath shined, how imperfect 
is the illumination! Even where thou hast named thy name, and 
called thine own people, and gathered them into households of faith, 
how little is there yet of God in men, and how little of peace, and 
how little of disinterested love! Indeed, the fine gold is dim. 

IS T ow, we thank thee that this is not the end. We rejoice that the 
measure of excellence attained in this life is not the limit of growth 
in things divine. We rejoice that we shall come to something higher. 
We rejoice that yet one day we shall drop these bodies, with all their 
manifold temptations. We rejoice that all those things which in this 
world seduce and distress and oppress men shall be done away. We 
rejoice that there remaineth a rest for the people of God. We re- 
joice that we shall see thee face to face ; that we shall know as we are 
known; that we shall be changed into thy glorious image; that we 
sha; \ be satisfied when we see thee, and are like thee ; that we shall 
be filled with gladness ; that sorrow and sighing shall flee away ; that 
there shall be no more pain ; that God shall wipe away all tears from 
every eye ; and that as a father comf orteth his children, so thou wilt 
comfort * is. We look unto thee for that which is present to so many 
who have been with us, and are dear to us. Shall we forever carry 
the sacred fire of love, shall we forever keep the spark of love alive, 
who are full of pride and selfishness and weakness, running to forge I- 
fulness of all that is great and good? shall love dominate even in 
memory with us? and shalt thou, who art infinitely higher and better 
than we, forget? 

We rejoice in the blessed thought that our father and our mother 
love us yet, though they are in heaven. We rejoice that our departed 
children love us still. We rejoice that thou, O blessed Saviour, un- 
seen by us, dost see us, and that though we are unlovely, thou dost 
love us with everlasting generosity and disinterestedness. And by 
this drawing of heavenly love, we desire to walk the straight and 
narrow path ; to ascend the difficult places which are appointed for 
everyone ; to dismiss fear, to become valiant. 

Grant, we pray thee, that we may be so intoned by the hope of 
the heavenly life, that we may live so near to the encouragements of 
it, that we shall be able to take enough out of it to uphold us in the 
present stress of life; that we may not only walk as seeing him who 
is invisible, but walk the realm invisible where he dwells. 

We pray that thou wilt be gracious unto all. Especially remem- 
ber those who, conscious of their want and weakness and wickeduess, 



herois: 59 

cast themselves wholly upon thy mercy and care. Thou wilt not b< - 
tray the confidence that any put in thee. Thou wilt not wait before 
thou receivest us. Afar off our Father shall see us, and run unto us. 
We rejoice in the overture, in the forerunning of thy love. We 
rejoice that all our help is of thy divine help, which, being derived 
from above, is better Tor us than that which comes from our own 
strength. Even so, lead us by the faith of thy love; by the con- 
sciousness of thy presence ; by the nearness of heaven ; by the memory 
of all who have gone before us from our side ; by the confidence of 
all the good and noble on earth that have gone in ages p?£t, and that 
are going. 

Grant that we may be patient and steadfast, constant in duty, 
looking evermore for the glorious appearing of our Lord and Saviour, 
who shall crown his suffering ones ; who shall give everlasting help to 
them that are bowed down with sickness; who shall give eternal 
strength to them that are broken by weakness. 

Now, Lord, we pray that thy blessing may rest especially upon 
those who are waiting upon thee in this assembly. Enter into ever]- 
heart. May every one know thy presence, and feel thy sacred breath 
upon them. Oh, to be loved of God ! To dwell in an atmosphere of 
conscious divine love, whether it be winter or summer! To know 
the peace that passeth all understanding! Grant this to everyone. 
And then, what more need we ask? For what are houses and lands 
to those who have mansions above? What are present joys, which 
must needs be taken away, compared with those eternal joys which 
await us? And what are earthly friendships and affiliations compared 
with those everlasting loves which those have who abide with thee ? 

Give thyself, then. Draw near to every one. Enter into every 
heart, speak peaceably to every one. Comfort all with the word of 
thy salvation. May none shut thee out. Whilst thou standest knock- 
ing, may every one open the door. May all hail and rejoice in the 
presence of a Deliverer. Be thou the Deliverer of every cue from 
sin, from care, from suffering, from remorse, and from all trouble. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt glorify thy name i this thy 
people — in the thoughts of those that shall be brought from darkness 
into light, and from bondage to liberty. 

Let thy kingdom come everywhere. O Lord, teach men to have 
compassion, even as thou art compassionate. Teach men to spare 
mankind. May all oppression, and all robberies, and all cruelties, 
and all selfishness, and all grinding ambitions, and all perverse and 
evil things, pass away. May the night cease. May the morning begin 
to come over the mountains. Rise, thou Sun of Righteousness, with 
healing in thy beams, and fill all the nations of the earth with glad- 
ness at thy approach. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises, ever- 
lasting. Amen. 



60 HEROISM. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the word 
of truth. Inspire those who are beginning life with heroic ideals. Let 
them not seek themselves. Let them not build up around about 
themselves, and be hidden by that which they build, and die in the 
midst of it. We pray that more and more men may make their lives 
useful to others. As seeds are borne by winds and planted in distant 
places, so may men's lives go out everywhere, and be planted. We 
pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to those who peril themselves, 
who sacrifice their interests, who give their lives outright, who con- 
secrate their genius, for the sake of others. May we think less and 
less of silver, and gold, and precious stones ; less and less of house, 
and table, and wardrobe, and equipage ; less and less of praise, and of 
what the world thinks or says. May we think more of thee ; more of 
thy thought. Oh ! what bounty there is in thy smile when thou art 
smiling because we do well ! What rapture there will be in thy words 
when thou shalt say to us, "Well done, good and faithful servant: 
enter into the joy of thy Lord !" Then we will give the praise of our 
salvation to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, evermore. Amen 



THE NEW TESTAMENT THEORY 
OF EVOLUTION. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT THEORY 
OF EVOLUTION. 



" Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shal I he : but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall 
be like him ; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath 
this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." — 1 John hi. 2, 3. 



There is the most striking contrast between the spirit of 
modern scientific thought in regard to man, and the spirit of 
the New Testament ; and nowhere is this found more than in 
the views which are taken of the nature of man. Science 
tends almost entirely, just now, to think of man as he was. 
The New Testament thinks of him as he is to be. The spirit 
of the one and that of the other are not necessarily antago- 
nistic. These two ways of looking backward and forward 
may be only complements of each other ; but at present one 
is seeking very diligently the origin, and the other has de- 
scried the destiny, of man. The one is looking for man's 
physical genesis, and the other has pointed out his spiritual 
regenesis. The one looks at the planting of the seed : the 
other follows, with the same eye, the flower and the consum- 
mate fruit which that seed is to bring forth. 

There are, therefore, heard two voices crying aloud. One 
says, ' { Man is of the dust; " and the other says, " Man is im- 
mortal." One declares, " Man is derived from the animal ;" 
the other says, " Man is the son of God." One says, " We 
came from beneath, by long ascension, to our present place ;" 
the other says, " "We ascend ; and it doth not yet appear to 
what heights of glory." 

Sunday Morning, October 5, 1873. Lesson : Col. i. 1-22. Hymns (Plymouth. 
Collection) : Nos. 199, 725, 497. 



64 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

Though these are not necessarily in conflict, they are 
made to be so, unwisely and unskillfully. 

It is of great use, certainly, to know of man's origin ; and 
a true philosophy will undoubtedly clear many abstractions 
from the way of men's thoughts ; but it is transcendently 
more important to know one's destiny. It is well to know 
what man came from : it is far better to know what he is 
going to. " It doth not yet appear what we shall be"; but 
now, even, we know that "we are the sons of God." What the 
amplitude of the meaning of that is we cannot tell, the apostle 
says ; and if the apostle could not discern the scenes that lay 
beyond the vail, certainly we shall not be able to do so. 

The fundamental and universal fact derived from observa- 
tion and experience is the physical and animal condition of the 
race, as a primary one. There are two theories : one, that man 
fell from a much higher estate to this low and rude one ; and 
another that man came from a low and rude beginning, and 
has been working toward a higher condition. Either theory 
comes to the same thing, as to the matter of treatment. The 
first man may have fallen. His posterity could not very well 
fall, for they began at the bottom. They were there. And 
any change, as men are born into life, must be a change up- 
ward. 

But this matters little. The New Testament does not 
look back. It but glances in that direction. There are only 
the merest hints — hints on the way to something else. 

The New Testament has two sights, as we should say 
speaking of firearms ; the present is the hind-sight, and the 
fore-sight is the future. It assumes things as they are, and 
then goes on to things as they are to be. The whole spirit of 
the New Testament is a spirit of going forward. It holds the 
present to be important only in the light of the future. It 
assumes, as from history and from philosophy, that man 
comprehensively is low and erring and sinful. Now, it 
is worse than folly to undertake to say whether this means 
total depravity, whether it means Adamic depravity, or 
whether it means depravity at all. The fact remains 
that men are universally so low and so sinful that they need 
divine interposition; that they need some other unfolding 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 65 

than that which comes by the forces of ordinary nature ; that 
they need divine succor and divine help to lift themselves up 
out of this low, sordid, animal condition, into that state in 
which they can call themselves, with any considerable degree 
of spiritual consciousness of the fact, sons of God. 

That man is susceptible of gradual change, and, in the 
divine providence, of an unfolding which we call civilization, 
and of which centuries are the term, all know, and all admit ; 
but can that unfolding be accelerated ? Can it be in part in- 
duced by man himself ? Is there in nature a new develop- 
ment-theory of the spirit ? That is the present question. 
That is precisely the ground which the New Testament takes. 
It does not ignore, it certainly does not argue against, the 
gradual unfolding which takes place by the visible process of 
nature ; but it does declare that there is introduced into this 
economy a new disclosure by which, under the influence of 
the divine Spirit, whatever is low in man may be lifted up ; by 
which whatever is dull and of the flesh may be spiritualized ; 
by which whatever could not come togetlier except through 
long ages of development (if it came together at all, which is 
a matter of more than doubt) may come speedily together. 

There is a doctrine, in other words, of a new birth in 
Christ Jesus. By the power of the Holy Ghost men are 
transformed, inspired, and brought into a state in which it is 
not mockery when they are called sons of God. So that it is 
the avowed opening of this new kingdom of influences, it is 
the direct inspiration of the human soul by divine contact, 
that constitutes the peculiar operative element of the New 
Testament. 

We are not to suppose that this is revealed as absolutely new 
truth ; for one might conceive of sporadic cases as occurring 
before there was any known impulse of this divine influence 
exerted upon the human consciousness. The two-leafed gates 
seem to have been thrown wide open before there was this 
knowledge, or where it was but in twilight. The Sun of right- 
eousness arose in Christ Jesus : and this truth of the juncture 
of God's nature with man ; this truth of such an inspiration 
by the Spirit of God that men are lifted high when it has 
its action upon them — this is a transcendent revelation of the 



66 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

New Testament, so far as man is concerned. The humar 
race was joined to the Lord Jesns Christ by his incarnation. 
Not that he was thought to be so worthy that as a reward 
God gave him the race, as it used to be said; but our rela- 
tionships to God as those of children to a father were so dis- 
closed through him, through his life, through his suffering, 
through his death, as to become potential upon the race for- 
evermore. 

The truth that the holy spirit of God, acting upon the 
human soul, develops it in all those qualities which are far- 
thest from the animal and nearest to God is that one truth 
of the New Testament which inspires the most activity, the 
most rational hope, and the most practical development of 
Christian efficiency. For while we do not undervalue those 
causative influences which take hold upon the individual, and 
at large upon society; while we behold, as it were, secondary 
influences at work, through the family state, through the 
community generally, and through all industrial avocations ; 
while we feel that the providence of God includes all the social 
framework ; while we regard man's interest in man, in some 
sense as a means of grace, yet the central and distinctive 
principle of the New Testament is that over and above it is 
the down-thrusting power of God, and that that power, act- 
ing in the human soul, kindles the imagination, fires the 
reason, creates a moral enthusiasm, and gives to the latent or 
undeveloped resources in man power by which he becomes a 
son of God in disclosure, as he was before potential in his 
undeveloped condition. We are not to exclude secondary 
a; id natural influences ; but there is, over and above these, as 
their consummation, a distinctive power, a direct approach 
of the soul to God as a Being present and consciously near 
to us. 

This is the true doctrine of the New Testament. It is a 
doctrine which cannot be tested by weights, by measures, by 
the alembic, by scales; nor will it be destroyed by remote analo- 
gies. It is a fact of consciousness ; and facts of conscious- 
ness are as much facts as any other facts of nature — as facts of 
turnips, of potatoes, of pumpkins, or of onions. Men seem 
to think that that is nature which is farthest from God — that 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 67 

trees are nature, that soil is nature, that electricity is nature, 
and that attraction of gravitation is nature ; but that imagi- 
nation, reason, inspiration, and moral consciousness, which 
are the highest reach to which creative force has carried the 
race — that these belong to nature, men do not believe. These 
are not, they say, "scientific." 

Now, I aver that nature, beginning with the clod, ends 
with man — no, not with man : it goes higher than that ; for 
man, as ordinarily contemplated, is the physical body com- 
posed of bone, blood, muscle, and nerves ; but the man that 
God is looking upon is a son of God, nascent, increscent, 
evermore developing. And I aver that the upper forms of 
nature are more nature than the lower forms, if so I may 
speak. That is to say, the reality of the invisible connected 
with man is a more stubborn and philosophical and rational 
reality than the reality of man in the body, and connected 
with the terraqueous globe. 

Science is doing its good work outside of the Bible, in de- 
tailing anthropology as it is seen and heard with external eyes 
and ears ; while revelation discloses anthropology as it is seen 
with the inside eyes, and revealed to the spiritual under- 
standing. By-and-by, when the centuries have rolled clear 
over, that side which is now opposite the sun, and groping in 
the dark, will be turned round, and man will recognize this 
higher disclosure of human nature, its approaches to the di- 
vine Spirit, and its dependence thereupon. 

The fruits of the Spirit are very beautiful, even as we now 
contemplate them — though I think we have seldom seen any 
ripe ones. You will find in Galatians that familiar passage — 
familiar to anybody who has heard me preach for the last 
three or four years, at any rate — which contains the inventory 
of the fruits of the spirit — "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." These, 
however, are only specimens. As one goes into a garden and 
brings out a bouquet, and yet does not pretend to take every- 
thing that is in the garden, but only enough to represent what 
is there ; so these fruits of the spirit do nothing more than 
suggest the multitude of those that exist. For what do we 
know of love ? You will say, " If there is anything of which 



68 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

we have a knowledge it is love. We who were born in 
Christian households ; we whose earliest remembrance is of 
looking into the face of father and mother ; we whose fea- 
tures take unconsciously the lineaments of our parents ; wc 
who saw their watchings ; we who saw how much they gav<? 
up for our sake ; we who saw how sweet was their approba- 
tion, and how reluctant was their censure ; we who saw their 
life, which was woven of the silver and golden threads of 
affection — we know about love. Then, we have seen the rap- 
ture of the young lover. We have seen how love triumphed 
over death itself. The noblest gems which history wears are 
those which love has disclosed ; and if we know about any- 
thing, we know about love." And yet we know nothing 
about it. We know as much about love as a child knows 
about a diamond that it has seen in the rough, but that it has 
never seen ground, with its facets flashing light in every di- 
rection. We know as much of love as men know of gold who 
have seen it in the quartz, and discerned the difference be- 
tween it and the quartz, but who have not seen it in its pure 
state. We have never seen love in such a sense that it 
dominated everything, in one man, in a single house- 
hold, in a whole neighborhood of households, in an entire 
town or city, everywhere regnant, so that the human mind 
threw out all the radiant glories of disinterested and true 
affection ; so that justice took on the garments of love ; so 
that truth clothed itself in love ; so that all forms of suffering 
were enshrined in love ; so that everything wore its colors, 
and was true to its allegiance. We have here and there seen 
it as golden particles in sand ; but we have seldom seen it as 
nuggets of gold; we have never seen it in its amplitude, as 
one complete golden orb, governing all things, and harmoniz- 
ing all things. 

But if it be so with love, which is, perhaps, next to hate, 
the strongest feeling in the world ; if it be true that we know 
so little of love, which is so strong and triumphant, how 
much do we know of joy? A good deal of a kind of rough, 
bouncing, boyhood joy ; but how much of joy as a garment 
which one wears, shining like silver, ruddy and radiant as 
gold ? Who knows what joy is, as an abiding state of mind, such 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 69 

that it is by day and by night in him uttering itself in all 
sweetness and all melody? Men see joy flash; they see it 
sparkle; they know what it is as an intermittent, limited ex- 
perience; but who knows it in its sweet majesty and power? 

Shall he who has only heard a half-tuned instrument played 
say that he knows what is the glory and power of music? and 
shall he who has only seen a moral quality in a discordant 
heart, in a half -tuned human soul, say that he knows what it 
is? I think thus of Christian graces. I have seen graces 
that were like music on a clarionet, with a learner at the 
other end of it; I have seen graces that were like music on a 
violin out of which were drawn notes that Paganini would 
never recognize; I have seen all manner of Christian graces 
produced on one-stringed instruments and two-stringed in- 
struments, but they were in a discordant, untuned, undis- 
ciplined state, so that they conveyed no conception of the 
glory and power of the reality of this quality of joy. 

Now take on the other hand the idea of various culture, 
drilled, disciplined, infinitely fruitful — Love, coupled, as it 
would be, of course, with joy, radiant, as on some bright June 
morning the sun itself is, which, while shining in amplitude 
through the heaven, is also sparkling in every single dew-drop 
on a million blades of grass, and on thrice ten million leaves, 
every one carrying its little sun — like God's nature, bountiful 
in universality, yet special in each individual experience; 
who has known of joy in any such way as that? If there be 
any here who have known such joy, let them speak. But in 
all the world there never was one such — nay, not even the per- 
fect Man; for it was "for the joy that was sot he/ore him" 
that he "endured the cross, despising the shanu." 

If it be so of love and joy, how much more is it so of 
peace! The ignominiousness of our conception of peace is 
shown in this — that it is supposed to be merely absence 
of suffering. Sleep is supposed to be peace-bearing. Then 
annihilation is peace; for sleep is, substantially, annihil- 
ation. "What do men, after all, know of that higher moral 
state, of that consummate condition of the soul, which 
consists in the harmonization, the equalization of every 
faculty, each one keyed to wholesome excitement — to that 



70 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

point or pitch where it is not affected by mundane in- 
fluences ? The consciousness of living in a higher ether ; the 
consciousness of God's presence; the consciousness of being 
lifted above fear and envy and jealousy ; the consciousness of 
the full activity of all the feelings, and yet, of their being so 
harmonized together that the soul is carried up into perfect 
tranquility, there never being so much of one's self as when 
he is in that higher altitude — who knows of these things ? 
We see glimpses of them in enthusiasts, in saints whose lives 
are written ; we read of men who had this deep peace ; and 
we smile and think that what they thought were experiences 
must have been dreams. No, they were realities. Subtle, 
ethereal, hard to touch, difficult to analyze, and well nigh im- 
possible to believe in, were they : but many of the most sub- 
stantial realities of the world are the very highest experiences 
which men have. 

" Long-suffering." There is a great deal of suffering, but 
very little Zcw^-suffering. " Gentleness." There is a great deal 
of weakness in the world ; but that is not gentleness. Soft 
touches, when a man cannot touch in any other way than 
softly, are not gentleness. Gentleness is power, intensity, 
vigor. Power made soft by the sweetness of love is gentle- 
ness. " Goodness, faith, meekness, temperance" — how little 
does any one know in respect to these ! 

Now, if this is fact, we see why it is that none of us know 
our sonship to God in this world. Our relationship and like- 
ness to him are to be disclosed in those elements which here 
are in their seed-form, or in the form of grafts loosely joined 
to the stock. We have not yet come to such a state of ampli- 
tude that we recognize ourselves in our higher nature, in the 
power of it, in its range, in its height, in its depth, in its 
length, in its breadth, in the fruitfulness of its continuing 
and familiar experiences. It doth not yet appear what we 
shall be as sons ' of God, when we rise to our higher moods, 
and come into possession of the great possibilities of the 
human mind. 

Here we have the Christian conception of manhood. 
Christianity does not concern itself with the origin of tilings. 
Leaving that to those who look simply with the eye of physical 



TEEOBT OF EVOLUTION. 71 

consciousness, it takes man as he is, declaring that he has 
within him powers by which he may be lifted above time and 
secular things — powers of reason, irradiated, stimulated, and 
inspired of God, which lift him into the sphere of that new 
and higher life in which he is a son of God. In a general 
and loose sense, he is a son of God always; but there are ele- 
faents of his being, such that when he is brought into the 
divine relationship he is by the spirit of God lifted into 
a full and blessed consciousness of his moral status. "When 
one has once come to that high consciousness, he has gained 
a victory over the world, not in the sense that there are no 
further liabilities or imperfections, not in the sense that here- 
after everything is to be completely rounded out, but in a yet 
higher sense. He has a new view of life and of destiny, a new 
idea of ambition, a new sphere of activity. He has overcome 
the world, in that he is no longer of it, though he is in it; 
and he feels that his treasure, that everything which belongs 
to him, is higher than the tides of time, or than the atmos- 
phere of the world. " It doth not yet appear what we shall 
be " when all these intimations and buddings and beginnings 
come forth in the heavenly land. 

I brought with me, when I came from the White Moun- 
tains, a week ago, specimens of what is going on in nature 
there — sprigs containing brilliant leaves of the scarlet maple. 
I also brought down golden leaves,, and mottled leaves, and 
bronzed leaves, in colors so intense that a painter's palette 
vould blush with shame for its own incompetency. I took 
.hern out, and laid them down, and said, "Here are speci- 
mens of what I have brought you from the mountains." But 
would anybody get from these leaves any conception of the 
vast ranges of the magnificence of the side-hill; of the miles 
and miles of continued forest; and of the fields and valleys 
and blushing shrubs, with their gradations and variations of 
color? Any specification of them which I could make would 
be utterly inadequate. You cannot look upon the scene as it 
really exists and realize it. You are overwhelmed by the 
sight. It surpasses all ordinary experience. In its presence, 
one seems almost to evaporate and float in the atmosphere of 
its glorious beauty. And when I bring this handful of leaves 



72 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

and show them to another, how absurd it is for him to say, 
"Now I have some idea of what you used to mean when 
you talked about the Mountains. " Poor creature ! you have 
no idea of it. 

Our English friends have seen autumnal colors ; "0 
yes," they say, "we have seen them;" but when they have 
once seen a color-fall in America, when God has drenched 
the earth in colors such that it seems almost as though 
they must have come from above, how imperfect do they 
find their conceptions to have been ! Who that ever in 
autumn went from New York to Albany along the Hudson, 
and saw on both sides the glory-sheeted magnificence of 
color which is presented all the way up, could describe the 
scene ? 

In short, when nature is teaching us a lesson that we 
never learn ; when nature is emblazoning symbols of religious 
things that we never take the hint from ; when nature comes 
to die, and displays all her banners, and goes trooping out 
in the majesty of most glorious aspects — then is she grand 
beyond the conception of the human soul. No man, be he 
poet ; no man, be he artist ; no man, be he ever so learned 
or skillful or inspired, can describe even matter in color ; but 
if the inward soul, if all the wilderness within man which 
has been made to bud and blossom as the rose by the Sun of 
Righteousness ; if all the summer of grace as it is brought 
out in the human being, carried up and made radiant as God 
and angels see it, with all his self-denial, all his boundless 
capacity, all his love and meekness and gentleness, in their 
lights and shades, of every kind — if these, when looked upon 
and descried by our dull eye, seem to us nothing ; if when 
men look at the descriptions which one gives of these things 
they say, "You must have a vivid imagination to conceive 
them," then I say, in the language of Scripture, " It doth not 
yet appear what we shall be." If all the images that 
belong to kingdoms, and all the images that art can furnish, 
and all the images that can be drawn from household and 
pastoral life, and all the images that belong to triumphant 
experiences — if these, in the day of the making of the revela- 
tion of Scripture, were inadequate to set forth the future of 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 73 

redeemed man, what must be the transcendent development 
upon which we are entering ! 

Whatever you may think of the development- theory be- 
hind, let me tell you that the development-theory before is 
worthy of a moment's attantion. Transcendently glorious 
is the outcome, no matter where the income was. 

In view of the points which have been faintly suggested 
by our discourse thus far ; in view of this opening of the 
apostle's thought as to the grandeur of our sonship, which is 
not yet disclosed, on the way to the majesty and beauty and 
glory of becoming kings and priests unto God, but which the 
apostle descries something of, I remark that dying and 
death ought to assume an entirely different place in our im- 
agination from what they have done in the minds of a great 
majority of Christians. I do not mean when we come to die ; 
for ninety-nine men in a hundred are not conscious when 
they come to die. That is not the time for reasoning. Men 
are changing then. They are letting go. Occasionally there 
are vivid realizations, but they are rare. Our habitual con- 
templation of death should be changed from that dark and 
gloomy aspect to which we have been so largely bred, and 
our thought of those who have gone out from us through the 
portals of the grave should be divested of that sadness and 
melancholy which envelope them. I know it is said that na- 
ture will have its way, and that it is not possible to break off 
readily the associations, the friendships and the affections of 
life, and not have the soul suffer ; and I would not have souls 
fail to suffer ; but I would not have an unhealing wound cre- 
ated by death. I would not have death thought of in such a 
way that the sufferer should look into the grave for what 
is not there. 

When the disciples went down to the tomb of Christ, what 
did they see ? Him whom they sought as he lay dead ? Or, 
raised by the power of God, did he sit there in the fullness of 
restored youth and vigor ? No. They saw the linen gar- 
ments and some napkins rolled together and put in one place. 
And they saw angels whose voices they heard saying, "We 
know whom ye seek : he is not here." 

When mothers go down to look for their children in 



74 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

Greenwood; when companions go, in some lonesome hours 
in which the world goes hard with them, and sit in memory 
upon the tomb of those who have been so much to them, I 
would to God that they could look up, and not down. Their 
dear ones are not in the grave. My children — why, they have 
never ceased twinkling like stars down upon me from the 
heaven above; and though for other reasons I have often 
been where they are buried, I have never made one purposed 
visit to their dust. I never shall go to the napkins and the 
garments which Christ wore after his resurrection, but to 
Christ himself; and I shall not look for my children in the 
dust to which their bodies have gone again. My children — 
so bright, so full of all promise, so full of sweetness, so full 
of everything that the heart craved — they rest with God, and 
my thoughts follow them through the air, and not through 
the ground. If you are sons of God, never look in the earth 
for your departed companions. Whatever may be the truth 
of their origin, let them come gradually, steadily up to man- 
hood through other forms, if you please; but when they have 
once reached manhood's estate, never go back again to their 
lower conditions seeking for them. You and yours, dying, rise. 

Do you ever notice the dandelion when it first comes up 
in the spring, and is nothing but a mat of little, flat and 
homely leaves lying snugly on the ground ? A few days of 
summer sun will bring out the plaited bud, nijopled in the soil. 
In a few days more it will lift itself higher, and open its golden 
circle. It is now born; and so are our children born to us. 
Wait yet a few days, and that blossom is shut up. Its beauty 
is gone. Wait a few da}'s again, and out it comes once more. 
But now it is an airy globe, white as pearl, and exquisite in 
form as no compass could score it. An ethereal globe it is. 
The wind could blow it away. And such are cur children. 
They have gone from us, beautiful to the last. Through all 
ages they shall live, and bud and blossom. They have been 
wafted away to the celestial sphere, where they are singing, 
and shall sing forever and forever. Sons of God are your 
children, and they are with God. 

Whatever may have been our origin, this view of our des- 
tiny ought to inspire in us a sense of personal worth. It was 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 75 

the function of pride to do this. But pride has become cold, 
and haughty, and full of conceits. Its ordinary operations 
are to separate men from their fellows, or to lift them above 
their fellows, or to clothe some with sovereignty. But now, if 
we are of the household of faith ; if we trace our relation- 
ship, through moral experience and through moral quality, 
to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Elder Brother, and if through 
him we are the children of God, and can say, in sincerity 
and in truth, " Our Father," then no man lives who may not 
in that line develop a sense of personal worth that will be of 
incalculable value to him. The want of suitable pride is one 
of the curses of men. The race suffers for the want of that 
sense of character, that sense of dignity, which alone can 
hold men back from things little and low, and keep them 
always in the line of things worthy, and which is inspired by 
a sense of our relationship to God. 

This view ought also to be a remedy for that sense of 
loneliness which falls upon persons who are thrown out of 
life, or who have never had any rich social relationships. 
Thousands and tens of thousands of people in society are 
consciously alone. ISTow and then a nature unlike those about 
it is born into a household, and never speaks its inward 
thoughts, and never declares its innermost feelings. Some- 
times persons have by changes been thrown out of society 
among straugers, or among friends who were no more to them 
than strangers, and they have had a sense of loneliness. Our 
Master himself felt it. He said that he was alone ; and then, 
correcting himself, he said that the Father was with him. 
Our sense of relationship to God, our sense of its reality 
and glory, is the legitimate correction of that sense of lone- 
liness which men so often feel. 

This view ought likewise to overcome that sense of waste 
and uselessness which is a source of unhappiness to men. 
There is something sad in the feeling that one has nothing to 
do. There is something sad in being thrown out of one's 
regular occupation. Many a man dreads sickness because it 
will make him a burden upon others. Many a man dreads 
being thrown out of his trade or profession, Or out of that po- 
sition in society in which he has thriven and been a blessing 



76 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

to others. Men feel that they are not good for anything any 
longer under such circumstances. This is especially apt to 
be the case when persons contemplate old age before they are 
old. When people get old, they do not usually feel so; but 
as they are drawing near to old age, and they perceive the 
signs and tokens of it, they dread the idea of being old. They 
dread the thought of being useless or laid aside. 

" They also serve who only stand and wait," John Milton 
said; but there is something better than that. They are of 
as much worth whom God is holding in reserve, as those who 
at the front of battle do the actual fighting. If we are the 
children of God, and our destiny is influenced, end our affairs 
are ordered, by a divine providence, then we are not useless, 
though just now we may not be actively employed. 

On unrolling some of the old Egyptian mummies (and the 
Egyptians were not so handsome, I think, that they needed 
to take so much pains to transmit their beauty through gen- 
eration after generation), you will find wheat three thousand 
years old. The Greelc empire has risen and gone; theEoman 
empire has risen, and its dust has been blown away, and civ- 
ilization has developed since the careful attendants rolled up 
that wheat; it has lain three thousand years doing nothing 
but keeping unconscious company with hideous mummies; 
and yet, when taken out and planted in a field, it goes to 
work, and comes right up, and develops a stem, and brings 
forth fruit, as though it had not taken a wink of sleep. And 
if wheat will keep as long as that, I am sure that men will. 
Though they are for years and years wrapped up, as it were, 
and kept from the soil and from usefulness, yet when God 
unrolls them, the seed will come out, and its germ will grow 
again. 

Look larger. Do not think of life as in the compass of a 
pint or a gill. Measure existence on a broad scale. How in- 
finite the space! how enormous the duration! how transcend- 
ent the capacity which belongs to the human soul! We are 
sons of God begun; and once being inoculated, once being 
under the divine favor and power, once having tasted the 
emancipation of God, it matters little whether we wait a week, 
a month, a year, or ten years. We are going to our home, 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 77 

and are sure to reach it; and then we shall know as we are 
known, and shall be satisfied because we shall be like God. 

In the convulsions and the scatterings that are taking 
place in the world; in the business distresses, the bankrupt- 
cies, the sudden revolutions which are occurring, the glory, 
the chiefest treasure, of man, cannot be touched. It is true 
that a man's relations to his fellows are much rent; it is true 
that there is a great deal of suffering and sensibility that 
should be guarded and respected, in these changes which are 
going on in the conditions of men; but what is the use of 
being a Christian if you have nothing better than anybody 
else? What is the use of being rich if you have no money? 
What is the use of having a million garments if you are not 
allowed to take one of them out and wear it? What is the 
use of being a horseman if you cannot use a steed? What is 
the use of being a hunter if you never draw a rifle? 

Here is God's armory and wardrobe; everything that men 
need is there; and why should not Christians equip them- 
selves for the duties of life, and guard themselves against its 
evils? Searching after treasures is good, r/ut it should be 
with higher motives, and with a higher consciousness. Other 
men's treasures take to themselves wings, and fly away; but 
a Christian man's treasures ought to have wings of faith so 
that they shall fly heavenward perpetually. Your treasure 
should be " where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where 
thieves do not break through nor steal." "And if, when you 
break down, if, when all that you have been accumulating for 
twenty years goes to the winds, if, when the earthquake shakes 
the city, you go shivering and saying, "I am ruined," you 
might as well have had no Christ to die for you. If, when the 
dirt falls from you, that ruins you; if, when your garments 
fall off, you find that there has been nothing to you but soil, 
or clothes, or money, then the -more you are ruined the better 
it is for the world. Are you ruined — you that Christ thought 
of in Gethsemane — you around about whom angel bands have 
been hovering ever since you were born — you whose name is 
written in the Lamb's Book of Life — you who are waited for 
and longed for in heaven — you for whom there is laid up palm, 
und crown, and scepter? 



78 T&E NEW TESTAMENT 

Ah ! the loss of things in this world is oftentimes great 
gain. Have you noticed that frequently, in the abundance of 
the leaves of summer, both the landscape and the mansion are 
hidden ? Though it is a sad time, and we do not like to see 
the leaves turn sere ; though we dread the coming of the 
frosts, yet behold, when, in the morning after the frost, every 
tree is bare, and not a leaf is left, as we look there appears a 
house that we have not seen all summer. The leaves hid it ; 
but now that the leaves are gone, it rises to our view. And 
the landscape — the mountains and the distant river — which 
has so long been obscured, is revealed to us. What a won- 
derful vision is opened when the leaves fall ! 

Many and many a man whose prosperity has been like 
thick foliage before his eyes, could not see his Father's house, 
had no view of the heavenly Jerusalem nor of the beautiful 
landscape beyond ; but when adversity came and stripped him 
bare, and people said, " He is gone ! he is gone ! " he was 
richer than he ever had been before. 

In these thoughts of a Christian manhood, in these aspira- 
tions after a higher life, mens hould find their greatest com- 
fort. The truth of God present with us ; the certainty that 
he cares for us, aiid will not forsake us ; the belief that if he 
is for us no man can be against us ; the doctrine that physical 
and material things are transient — these are the foundation 
on which a man should build his trust. In the consciousness 
of these things he walks on the sea at night as Christ walked 
on the sea at night, and rules the storm as Christ ruled the 
storm. 

Christian brethren, let us take hold of these pillars of our 
hope. You are the sons of God. It doth not yet appear 
what you shall be ; but when He shall appear you shall be like 
him. Having these hopes, purify yourselves, and live more 
by faith, and less by sight ; more by the power of God, and 
less by the power of the world ; more by long-suffering, and 
love, and all those holy conceptions which shall call you from 
the thrall of the flesh into the emancipation of the spirit, and 
crown you with eternal rejoicing. 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 79 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 



We come boldly to thee, our Father, not because thou hast coin 
mancled it, but because our experience hath made it impossible for us 
to come except as children to a parent. When we look toward thee 
there are no clouds. We behold no dark ground where thou sittest 
with overwhelming terrors. We think of thee as thou hast taught us 
to do when we say, Our Father, which art in heaven. Behind thee is 
supernal glory, and with thee is all beauty of love and graciousness. 
We rejoice that we are more and more learning what is the power of 
love. We rejoice that it carries with it such force. We rejoice that 
it hath in it such sharpness. We rejoice that it impels so unerringly 
the justice of God; and that those things on which the world doth 
ascend, and by which men shall be lifted above their lower con- 
ditions, are not unthought of by thee. Everywhere it is thy love that 
is vindicating truth against error; it is thy love that is marking the 
broad distinction which exist between good and evil; it is thy love 
that makes suffering, and that makes joy; and in thy hand are all 
the powers which are known to us, and doubtless powers which are 
unknown to us, and are transcendent. 

We beseech of thee that we may not be as stones on which fall 
the rain and the dew of summer, and the winds and storms of winter, 
and which are still rounded stones without thought or fruit or beautj'". 
We beseech of thee that we may not be as the low creeping grass 
which is simply food for the cattle that browse it. May we rather be 
as the vines that evermore grow, striving to ascend toward the sun, 
and throwing out branches, that they may bring forth fruit. Thou 
art the vine: may we be thy branches. Grant that we may seek thee 
evermore, and seem to ourselves to be most near to thee when w T e 
bear the fruits that are like thine — the fruits of the spirit. 

May thy blessing rest upon every one of us, in those mortal 
ntruggles which we are called to wage, and which have come upon 
us in our selfishness. See how often we are whelmed therein, and 
r>wept by its currents, long before we know that we are floating 
far out to sea. Behold our strife with pride, with vanity, with envies, 
with jealousies, with all the evil passions; and have compassion 
upon us. Smite us, that we may not be permitted to sit down and 
be content with these things. Love us by pain. Love us by such 
pharp dealing that we shall be aroused out of that which is low and 
animal, and be brought, though it be by labor-pain and outcry, into 
that which is truly spiritual and divine. And yet, have compassion 
upon our weakness. Remember that Ave are but dust, and pity us. 
even as a father pitieth his children, so that we may not. be destroyed 
by thy dealings with us; so that thy sharpest providences, to the 
uttermost work of the Spirit, shall be to the soul as is the fire to the 
gold which cleanses it, and brings it forth, none lost, but all set free, 
utterly, from that which is base. 

We give to those whom we love the best things; and dost not 
thou, O thou greater and better Lover, desire to give to us the best 
things — joys unspeakable and full of glory; peace which passeth all 
understanding; that manifestation of thyself which the world can- 



80 THE NEW TESTAMENT 

not perceive? Grant to all thy servants a summer which shall break 
forth in their souls, so that every one of them may be bringing forth 
whatsoever is sweet and pleasant to thee, O blessed Father of the 
summer. 

We pray that thou wilt forgive whatever has been amiss in us. 
We pray that thou wilt help us to repent of everything that we haT 3 
done which was wrong. And we remember that there are things that 
go below the horizon which thou forgettest, and which we do not 
know. We ask, therefore, for the pardon of all our known sins, and 
for the pardon of all the sins of which we are unconscious. And we 
beseech of thee that we may be held more and more every day upon 
that highway, cast up, upon which the ransomed of the Lord shall 
return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their 
head. Give us this victory. Give us to walk among men who weep 
without crying. Give us to walk among men that stoop, borne up by 
the power of Christ. By the side of men who are cast down, may we 
be able to stand, not by our own strength, but by the strength of the 
Lord Jesus which is in us. Raise us above the struggle; and as in the 
day of battle sometimes the thunder ceases and the voice of music 
is lifted on the wind, so, in the midst of our varied warfare may there 
come to our ears such heavenly music as shall give us joy and glad- 
ness before the victory, as a token of our triumph. For we shall not 
be overcome. We shall not be cast away. 

Lord Jesus, we have come to thee. Thou knowest that, and our 
souls know it. We have taken thee to be ours, and have given all 
that is in us to be thine. But we know our aberration ; we know that 
we often go back again to the world and its evils ; but never with 
satisfaction or profit. And we rejoice in our souls that thou hast laid 
the hand of possession upon us, and that none shall take us out of 
thine hand; and that thou wilt yet, through tears, through strifes, 
through sufferings, through sorrows, through hope, through courage, 
through love, through joy, through divine inspiration, through every 
dealing of thy providence, give us the victory; and we pray that we 
may have the consciousness of it, and seem to ourselves as the Sons 
of God, though we be far from our Father's kingdom. May we walk 
as they who have no other heritage. 

And we beseech of thee, our Father, that thou wilt help us to these 
things, not that we may have the enjoying of them, but that they 
may make us bright, so that we shall reflect light upon others ; and 
make us warm, that others may be warm in our presence. We pray 
that we may discern thee ia order that we maybe able to bringdown 
a picture of thee to those who have not faith to discern thee for them- 
selves. Thus make us ministers of Jesus Christ, supplying the great 
want of the human soul. 

Grant thy blessing to rest upon every household. If some are 
darkened; if the voice of sorrow sounds in any, wilt thou, O Lord, 
be present there. May all who are pierced know of thy wounded 
side. May they discern Him who comes bearing the best gifts. Bring 
near to thy children, the world to come, that their sorrows may not 
seem so great nor so strange. May they forget those things which are 
disagreeable in this state, because they behold the grandeur of the 
realities of the state toward which they are going. Strengthen all 



THEORY OF EVOL UTION. 8 1 

those who are perplexed by the burden of their business. Give con- 
solation to those who are bowed down with sorrow. And we pray 
that thou wilt grant that all thy servants may be able to take the 
disciplines of their daily life as tokens that God is dealing with them. 
May they find themselves superior, on every side, to the earth on 
which they tread, and to its affairs which bewilder them. 

We beseech of thee, O Lord, that thou wilt grant thy blessing to 
rest upon all the strangers who are in our midst. May they cease to 
feel that they are strangers. May the spirit of the love of Christ 
unite them to us and us to them, so that there shall be but one brother- 
hood here. May they find among us a home in Jesus Christ. In 
prayers and sweet songs of Israel, in faith, and hope and aspiration, 
may we all be so united, to-day, that they shall not seem to be 
strangers in a strange land. Sanctify and bless all their desires. And 
carry, as thou dost love to do, the mercies which they ask for their 
dear ones whom they have left behind, to their household, wherever 
it may be. When we love our children or friends, nothing pleases us 
so much as to have done for them the things which are for their 
good ; and to-day wilt thou please thy servants by doing the things 
which they wish to have done, especially for those who are near and 
dear to them. Wilt thou give them tokens and intimations of gra- 
cious answers to their prayers in behalf of those for whom they are 
praying. Some are praying for wandering children ; some for chil- 
dren who have stumbled and fallen ; some for absent ones ; some for 
such as are not with them in the innermost life, though they are out- 
wardly united to them. And we beseech of thee that the desires of 
all these, though they be mute and unuttered desires, far within the 
soul, which they know not how to breathe to men nor even to speak 
unto God, may not go unanswered. Listen to them, we beseech of 
thee, in thy great mercy. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all thy churches. May 
this day be a day of great power among thy people. We pray that 
thou wilt give light where there is twilight, and that thou wilt purge 
away the darkness where there is error. Unite thy people more and 
more in things in which they agree. 

Be pleased, O Lord, to remember that assemblage of thy people 
which is gathered from across the sea,* and from every part of the 
earth, to hold counsel together. We pray that their thoughts may 
not be so sharp that again thou shalt be crowned with thorns. May 
their thoughts of love twine for thee that crown which thou shalt 
wear in victory at last. May they strive to please thee by that unity 
which thou didst promise to bring to pass in all the earth. 

O thou that dost hide thyself, how thou dost also hide thine hand! 
We cannot understand thee. Why doth the earth wait so long? Why 
do the myriad generations that march in, march out again ? Why is 
there such darkness and ignorance ? Thou knowest ; and yet one day 
we shall know, but not now; and we hide our eyes from the sight. 
The whole creation yet groans and travails in pain. Lord, our 
thought is in that which we behold. We lift ourselves above sight, 
and in faith believe in thee, and in thy government, and in thy uni- 

* Referring to the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York. 



82 SPIBITTJAL EVOLUTION. 

verse, yet disenthralled and triumphant, and in thy great and glori- 
ous future. May none of us fail to be found among those that love 
thee, and have labored in thy cause. For to have done the least 
thing will, in the future, seem to us more than now to have founded 
empires. And may all of us be remembered, who are doing any- 
thing for Christ, though it be but giving a cup of cold water to a 
little child, whether with partial knowledge or in darkness, even 
as blindly as the roots in spring seek to go toward the light, finding 
their way through the soil; and may we meet together in that land 
where we shall see no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face, 
where we shall know thee as thou art, and where we shall be like 
thee. 

And to thy name shall be the praise forever and forever, Father, 
Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE -SERMON. 

Bless us, our Father, in our attempt to unfold such truth as may 
give us an impulse in the right way. May there be some bread for 
every hungry mouth, and some water for every thirsty lip. May thy 
truth multiply itself, and spring up, and bring forth fruit an hun- 
dred fold in every heart. Help us to sing again to thy praise. Enable 
us to sing more and more. And as the world grows dim, and strength 
declines, may our songs become more frequent. May we sing all the 
way to the border of the river; and may our voice come back from the 
other side to those who stand and weep for us, that they may know that 
we are singing still in an everlasting song. And to the Father, the Son 
and the Spirit, shall be the praise. Amen. 



THE ATONING GOD. 



THE ATONING GOD. 



" Seeing theD that we have a great high-priest, that is passed into 
the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. 
For we have not a high-priest which cannot be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we 
are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne 
of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time 
of need."— Heb. iv. 14^16. 



"Whatever else may be said, there can be no question that 
to those to whom this word came, the reigning God was pre- 
sented in aspects the most tender and the most encouraging, 
by reason of his intimate relationships with human experi- 
ence and human history. It is the method of the Bible to 
present the divine nature to men through symbols. God is 
never seen as he is; and those symbols are such as will impart 
the most accurate or the nearest impressions of truth to those 
to whom they are immediately given. In speaking to the 
Jew, there could be no symbol or representative character that 
would convey more knowledge on the side of divine sympathy 
and mercifulness than that of their high-priest; and so to them 
Jesus is called a high-priest. And it is declared that we are 
to come to him in every time of need, because he is joined to 
us by an actual personal knowledge obtained from his own 
experience. 

Now, I wish to come to this thought of our text, as found 
"in the epistle to the Hebrews, through a different repre- 
sentation, made by a different writer. We know not who 
was the author of the epistle to the Hebrews; but it is, I 
think, transparently certain that it was not Paul. In writing 

Sunday Morning, October 12, 1873. Lesson: Isaiah liv. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection): Nos. 130,296,364. 



86 THE ATONING GOD. 

to the Corinthian Church, Paul uses this language, in the 2d 
chapter of the 1st epistle: 

"I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of 
speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. Foi 
I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified." 

That is, not even him, in any other relation than that of 
the crucified Jesus. 

•"I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. 
And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words ot 
man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that 
your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power 
of God." 

We shall get back again from this passage to the other 
one in due time. The apostle here was not unfolding the 
history of his procedure among the Corinthians. He was 
not unfolding the topics which he had discussed, or which he 
meant to discuss among them. We have the record showing 
that he did talk about many other subjects besides that of 
Jesus Christ; and those who cite £his passage as showing that 
the pulpit must not preach upon any other topic but that are 
mistaken. But Paul says that ingenuity and the blandish- 
ments of rhetoric were not employed to give to this truth 
excellency of speech. In regard to whatever in speech is at* 
tractive, persuasive, witching, artful, beauteous, the apostle 
declares that he did not resort to it. He says, "I did not 
attempt to win you by aesthetic persuasion; nor did I attempt 
to enter upon the domain of your beliefs, by the power of an 
all-compelling logic or philosophy." 

There were schools multitudinous, and men were drifted 
off into sects in those days by cosmogonies, by philosophies, 
which undertook to develop the theory of human life in re- 
spect to the present and the time to come; and the apostle 
said, " I did not imitate them, and undertake to give you a 
theory of the world and all the universe. I did not by wis- 
dom attempt, as it were, to ensnare you, and lead you cap- 
tive by logical bonds; but I determined that if I had success 
with you it should be through such an opening of the divine 
nature that the power manifested should be not so much 
from me as from your conception of that divine nature which 



THE ATONING GOB. 87 

should be able to disclose to you. I determined that your 
aith should not stand in man, so that anybody could say, 
; Yes, it is Paul ; and as quick as he is gone away, and they 
do not hear his voice any more, they will fall back : they arc 
mere Paulites.' I determined that men should not say, ' He 
caught them because he was an ingenious reasoner ; he en- 
snared them with his arguments and subtle sophistries.' I 
proposed to open before you such a conception of the divine 
nature as should make that divine nature act through your 
faith and belief so as to be 'forever after operative in you. T 
proposed to give you access to God ; to give you confidence in. 
him ; to give you boldness, in other words, to come at every 
time of need to the throne of grace. This is what I meant 
to do : not to preach myself ; not to preach human ingenui- 
ties ; bub to develop such a divine character as should make 
every man want to believe, and especially every man that was 
in trouble." 

What, then, was that special view which he meant to de- 
velop ? 

" I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified." 

There was every reason in the world why a cautious, diplo- 
matic teacher, seeking to revolutionize an old system, and to 
introduce a new one, should avoid that particular point in the 
history of Jesus Christ when writing to a Jewish audience, as 
in part he was ; for never was there an idea so contradictory 
to the notion of the people of that time as that the Messiah 
was one who should be taken captive by a handful of men, and 
scourged and stripped of all power, and laid away helpless as a 
slave, and made to suffer an ignominious death. It was the ab- 
solute' obliteration of everything that they had thought respect- 
ing the delivering Messiah. And it would seem a monstrous 
blunder in the apostle to bring this forward in a Jewish audi- 
dience. Still less, if possible, would it seem apposite to 
a Greek or cultivated audience, because it sets forth Jesus 
Christ as the divine emblem and significant representation of 
God, and yet shows him as broken, as scourged, and as 
crucified. And to this hour, human nature, uninstructed, 
revolts at the consideration of a divine nature that is bent 



88 THE ATONING GOD. 

before the power of men, and is made subservient to all their 
passions, and is overthrown. The standing argument to-day 
against the divinity of Christ is, " Do yon suppose G-od could 
die ? Do you suppose God could suffer such indignities — the 
infinite, the all-powerful, the transcendently pure and un- 
changeable ? Do you suppose that a being whose nature it is 
to be everlastingly happy could be a man of sorrows and ac- 
quainted with grief ?" All those crystalline notions of divin- 
ity which the Greek mind had excogitated were put to shame 
by the conception of a God who could suffer, or could submit 
himself to the coercing hands of men that he might be made 
to suffer. There was every reason, therefore, both in respect 
to the Jews and in respect to the Greeks, why a different line 
should be followed. 

In the thought of Paul, Christ made manifest a view of 
God which had never before been so clearly brought out, 
which had been seen, if at all, only in twilight, and in which 
was set forth the supreme power of the family government of 
God in the world. Paul declared, in preaching Christ and 
him crucified, that God was one who was capable, through 
sympathy, of suffering for his creatures. He brought near — 
I might almost say he brought into — the household the long- 
exiled Father, and united the human race in Jesus Christ to 
its lineal and lawful Head, and so revolutionized, from the 
very foundation, the theological conceptions of God, of the 
divine government, of the human race, of its relations to 
God, and of its destiny. You cannot maintain the two sys- 
tems — the old Greek monarchical conception of an absolute 
God, crystalline, pure, lifted up above all needs and infirmi- 
ties, and demanding exact obedience, or punishing disobedi- 
ence ; and the Christian conception of a Father whose is the 
whole human race, with its great burdens of sin and igno- 
rance and mistakes and aspirations and yearnings and long- 
ings, which have no meaning in the heart of a Deity such as 
the Greeks believed in. You cannot reconcile these opposing 
theories. Paul, having felt the more true and divine con- 
ception of God as an infinitely sensitive Being who had 
always felt for every single living creature in the race, 
coupling himself to mankind so that they should be trained 



THE ATONING GOB. 89 

up along their stumbling way by the invis^b'e and uncon- 
scious drawings of his great paternal heart — Paul, having 
once gained this idea, could not extinguish it. Once receiv- 
ing this light, it was to him transcendent over every other ; 
and he said, 6i I determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ 
as the epitome and incarnation of Go 1, and I determined not 
to know him simply in his syllabic teaching among men, 
sweet, serene, and beautiful : I determined to know him as 
set forth by the supreme and emblematic act of dying for 
those whom he loved, and those that hated him. In this 
aspect, disclosing the nature of God, I determined to know 
Jesus. And I determined to preach that view among you, so 
that they should not say that it was the man ; that it was the 
voice of cunning, or the glitter of magnificence ; so that they 
should say that it was something that had risen out from the 
bosom of divinity ; so that your faith should stand in that 
grand view of God which represented him as a suffering 
parent. " 

Such is the aspect of the divine nature which the apostle 
determined to present ; and it was the disclosure of a great 
partnership of God with the human race, like that of a father 
with his family. It implies no such suffering of Christ as 
comes to man in his animal nature. It implies no such 
suffering as comes from ignorance or from corruption. "We 
should ascribe to God that which would shock your sensibili- 
ties if we represented him as undergoing any such suffering 
as that which comes from the lower nature of man. There is 
a vulgar suffering, and there is royal suffering. That suffer- 
ing which comes from the baffled and disappointed and un- 
lawful endeavors of men to compass wrong ends by wrong 
measures ; that suffering which falls out by reason of our 
stumbling against law, unseen or unknown, is a low form of 
suffering ; but there is a much higher form. We have anal- 
ogies and exemplifications of it in human life itself. It is the 
indispensable condition of nobility. There was never a hero 
in this world, there was never anybody that the human race 
conceived of as royal, who had not suffered for others ; who 
had not given himself in some sense for his fellow-men. The 
heroes, for the most part, that have been known, the men 



90 THE ATONING GOD. 

who have been erected into demigods or deities, were, all of 
them, in spite of their faults, beings who had had the heart 
and the greatness to suffer for their country and for their 
kind. We cannot imagine a true nobility that is self- 
contained; that is able to ward off all suffering; that never 
does suffer; that never will suffer; that can live in the midst 
of human life and all its unfoldings and environments and 
contrive to maintain itself inviolate from suffering. It is in- 
consistent with our fundamental notions of true manhood, 
that a being should go through this life in the conditions in 
which men live, and be able to shield himself entirely from 
suffering, and wrap himself in a serenity of perpetual joy. 
We may say, " That is a beautiful conception;" but there is 
nothing in it that wins the admiration and reverence of men. 

Coming down from the higher levels of heroism, we can- 
not conceive of a friendship which does not carry in it the 
willingness to suffer one for another. Friendship is a part- 
nership in sorrow and sympathy. . There is no friendship 
which has not in it the willingness, not only to prevent, but 
to take, rather than inflict, suffering. You cannot conceive 
anything that is beautiful in the parental relation except 
through the medium of suffering. For although without suf- 
fering the father and mother may be faithful, after all, it is 
their labor, it is their care-taking, it is their saving their chil- 
dren by, in some sense, the bearing of things which would 
come upon those children, it is using their strength to lift up 
weakness, it is their using experience toward off the mischiefs 
of inexperience, it is making their hearts large enough, divine 
enough, to suffer for their children — it is these things that 
make the mother what she is in the reverence of every affec- 
tionate child, and that make the father venerable as he is in 
the memory of every true son. 

Now, when men say, <( It is a desecration of the divine 
idea to say that G-od is competent to suffer," it is true if 
that which is -meant is suffering from the animal nature. 
No such feeling is to be attributed to the divine nature. 
But if I say to myself, " God is a being who never suf- 
fers through pity, or sympathy, or benevolence, or love," I 
take away from the divine character those elements which 



THE ATONING GOD. 91 

would lift up human nature and make it admirable in our 
sight ; I take out of the divine nature those very qualities 
which draw men together; I destroy in the divine nature 
those very attributes for which the human heart, everywhere 
and always, longs and yearns. 

Transferring to God material elements ; physicalizing the 
heavens ; representing the divine Being as sitting upon a 
throne of crystal, and as having a pavement of glass under his 
feet ; surrounding him with every quality of external mag- 
nificence which an Oriental imagination can conceive — this 
makes God a poem ; but it is a poem to which no wounded 
heart, no transfixed soul, would ever draw near. When men 
are in trouble they do not go to the house of revelry. When 
men are needy they do not seek out those who enjoy mere 
external prosperity in the highest degrees. Men who are 
broken in heart seek those whose hearts have been broken. 
Men who are in trouble seek those who have been in trouble. 
Men go to those who are reputed and believed to be in sym- 
pathy with their wants. And if there is to be a divine nature 
disclosed, away with the barbaric idea of universal power f 
That does not make a God such as the wants of men require. 
You may make a being the wisest and the most universal in 
the out-reaching of his governing forces ; but that does not 
make the God which the universe needs, and without which 
it collapses into despair. It is not till you go from the hand 
to the heart that men begin to find the medicine for inexpe- 
rience and ignorance. What the world wants is a God that 
can feel for those who are out of the way, and have compas- 
sion upon them because he knows what they are. He remem- 
bers their frame, that they are dust. As a father pities his 
children, so the Lord pities them. Such a Lord, so pitying, 
is an object of universal desire and universal attraction. 

Hence the sesthetic conception of divinity, the philosophy, 
whether ancient or modern, that lifts God above suffering 
and sorrow, even if it teach that he sent his Son into the 
world to die for it, does not reveal a being that draws men 
powerfully. 

Ah ! if when Jesus came into the world, God stayed at 
home to enjoy himself, he is very little to me. Would their 



92 THE ATONING GOD 

be any benefit in such a God? Oh, yes; some. If I were 
sick, poor, suffering from need, and there should be some 
near relative of mine — my father's brother, my mother's 
sister, or some one else — who should receive intelligence of 
my distress, and should send me a pound of tea by an errand 
boy, that would be something. If such an one should say to 
his child, "Go down, and convey for me my sympathy and some 
succor to yonder suffering one," that also would be something. 
But there is nothing like going one's self. No person can 
take the place of a fr;end. There is in trouble and in sorrow 
no salve and no balm like that of personal affection and per- 
sonal sympathy. 

Now, if Jesus Christ came into the world to tell me that 
God for a time intermitted the great seal of absolute govern- 
ment, and permitted him to be sorry for the world, and 
to die for it, that is something; but it is not that glori- 
ous something which I think he brought to light — namely, 
the fact that he was divine himself, and that, coming into 
life to suffer, he came to make known to men that the willing- 
ness to suffer for them was the divine nature, — his and his 
Father's. It does not seem to me that he invented and got 
up some plan with which he came into this world, and by 
which he meant to save as many as he could. He came to 
make known to the human race, in tones that will vibrate to 
the last centuries of time, the central truth that God is su- 
preme and sovereign, not because he is perfect, and not be- 
cause he is lifted above care and trouble, but because he has 
in him a heart and soul that feels for sin, for infirmities, 
for sorrows, for mistakes; for all that goes to wreck and ruin. 
Such was the divine nature, brought to us in a language which 
we can understand, through the incarnation of the divine 
Spirit in Jesus Christ, and revealing to us, not something 
gotten up as an episode, not something interjected upon the 
course of time, but that God was the eternal Father of ages, 
and that he was a Being whose sympathies were vital, univers- 
al, exquisite, and full of stimulating, rescuing power. And 
for the ages and ages yet to come, the eternal sovereign is to 
be named Father; and he earns and deserves the title, by 
having transcendently and infinitely more compassion and 



THE ATONING GOD. 93 

sympathy and suffering power for those wno are in peril than 

any earthly parent has. 

"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto youi 
children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven giv<) 
good gifts to them that ask him." 

It is the infinitude of Fatherhood in God, and the con* 
nection that there is between father and children, which 
always implies sympathy, and willingness to suffer and give 
one's self rather than that trouble and mischief should 
come upon those that are as dear as children. The whole 
great race of mankind on the earth, and all their dark 
passages, and all their thundering cries, have been going on 
under the eye and beneath the heart of a Father, who has a 
wise purpose which he will fulfil in his time, and reveal in 
the days that are yet to come. 

So the service of Christ, as our tender high-priest, was 
to bring home to mankind the actual sympathy of God with 
all the sorrows, struggles, aspirations, mistakes, sins and 
punishments of mankind. This, I think, ought to set aside 
the very insufficient and unskillful notion that prevailed 
(and it is not strange that it should have prevailed), in 
days past — namely, that in bearing the sins of the world, 
men have supposed that there was a literal bearing of 
every sin which every single man committed; or that there 
was a literal bearing of the scoffs of men. It was thought 
that Christ had heaped upon him the sum total of every 
sensibility that ever had throbbed as a penalty for sin, or 
ever should throb, thus turning the gulf-stream of all hu- 
man suffering to set in on him, and making him, in one 
hour, or in a single period of time, bear every one of men's 
actual sufferings in his heart. 

Now, how unnecessary is this! How it turns a figure 
into a scientific dogmatic statement! God suffered for the 
whole world, and suffered for every creature; and if by his 
mighty power, by his moral influence, by his transforming 
potency, he is leading men out of sin, he is doing in the 
heavenly sphere what parents do on earth. The mother suf- 
fers, in some respects, more than the child does; it is proper 
to say that a mother has borne her child's sufferings and cares 



94 TEE ATONING GOD. 

for twenty years; but does anybody believe that every thought 
or feeling of pain which that child has experienced has been 
experienced by the mother? Is it meant that there has been 
an absolute transfer of the moral quality of the penalty for 
every transgression, of every item of suffering, from one to 
another? This transgresses the law of the human mind. It 
is mechanical, it is physical, it is false. Instead of that, we 
have revealed the more glorious sense of God in his sympathy, 
united to the whole human family by his love, by his patience, 
by his kindness, by his self-denial, by his activities, serving 
not himself, but the household of ages. And what need 
there is of such a God! What other view of God can you 
have when you look at the actual condition of men through 
time? 

If there is going on a sublimer process than it has entered 
into the heart of man to conceive; if the method of creation 
is greater than any conception that we have; and if God sits 
sovereign as the Father, the Lover, and the long-patient 
Waiter of the universe, by his own thought and by his own 
long-suffering kindness carrying men onward and upward, 
then how sublime a being is God! how transcendent is his 
function! how is he lifted up above the small and niggling 
notions of moral government derived from the impressions 
of human government! 

Without this view, it seems to me the conditions of the 
human race are not reconcilable with any conception of God 
which men can worship. I certainly admit that it is impos- 
sible for me to worship a God such as has hitherto been 
taught. I think the world has been cheated. I think the 
priest has been transferred from the old cruel service of 
pagan Eome to the mediaeval ecclesiastical service, and 
that a cloud has been thrown between God as a Father and 
mankind. I think that whatever is tender and merciful has 
been usurped by the external and the visible. Pity and mercy 
have been in the church and in the world in the hands of a 
priesthood who have used it partly for good, but more for the 
maintenance of their outward authority and reign. And God 
has been robbed of his attributes. Some parts have been taken 
from him and given to the Virgin Mary; but God himself is 



THE ATONING GOD. 95 

as full of compassion and tenderness as the wildest poems 
have made the Virgin's heart to he. Other parts have been 
given to the pontiff ; but God has in him every gracious 
quality that belongs to the true pontiff. He has in himself 
all that the human soul needs. Man, brought into life as ho 
has been, struggling with ignorance, oppressed by passions, 
thrown into a society that has little regulation, tempted, 
biased, warped far more than he has power to resist, 
finds in God everything that is needful to him. In God 
there is a nature that is not delegated to any virgin nor 
to any priesthood, which he will retain forever, and which 
embraces all those elements of patience and loving-kindness 
which are necessary for the development of the world and tho 
salvation of the race. 

Therefore, the substitution of parental sovereignty fof 
barbaric and despotic sovereignty, carries with it a balm of 
hope, and a regenerating, recuperating and cleansing power, 
which cannot be derived from anything else. 

I say, I am determined to know nothing else but the sov- 
ereign majesty and the suffering power of love. In other 
words, I am determined to know nothing but the capacity of 
this love to suffer for men. We need sympathy. We die 
without it. Jesus Christ is to me the emblem of God. He 
came to teach me by his suffering, not that God, is a mere 
conservator of law, but that the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Ghost, one God, are filled with patience and mercy and 
loving-kindness and forbearance and atonement. 

Do you ask me if I believe in the atonement of Christ ? 
I believe in the atonement of God. I believe that there is no 
other atonement but that everlasting nature of God which 
spares the weak, which pardons the guilty, which draws men 
out of themselves, which is long-suffering, but which says, 
" There shall forever be a difference between truth and lies, 
between right and wrong ;" which says, " Forever and forever 
selfishness shall be painful, and benevolence shall be blessed ; 
and I will maintain that which is high and noble, and will 
bring the race up to it by stripes, by chastisements, by tears, 
by suffering, by long trial ; and I will bear and forbear with 
them, never forgetting that I am striving for the glorious en- 



96 THE ATONING GOB. 

f ranchisement of the animal into manhood, and for the eleva- 
tion of manhood into the sonship of God ; and I will see that 
men shall not he contented and untroubled in wrong ways. I 
will smite and punish ; but the smiting and the punishing will 
be for the sake of making my love manifest. Whom I love I 
chasten, and I scourge every son that I receive." 

Such is the divine moral government. Such is the sov- 
ereignty of God's paternity and Fatherhood. 

This view does not destroy the right and wrong of sin and 
holiness. As I have shown, they stand as facts under organic 
systems of the laws of the world. There is no need of teach- 
ing men that there is wrong, and that it carries penalty. 
The whole creation has been groaning and travailing in pain 
until now. The necessity of law and obedience has been evi- 
dent for incalculable generations. Men need no testimony 
that sin is sinful, that it is dangerous, and that they must in 
some way live above it. What was needed was the revelation 
of the divine paternal sympathy, of the love of God, brood- 
ing upon men, and helping them out of that which is evil 
and into that which is good. 

Modern theology goes on preaching and turning end for 
end the doctrine of sin and repentance. It teaches that 
when men have repented God will be lenient ; but that is not 
where we need to have the emphasis put. When we are 
born, we are born in sin. "In sin my mother conceived 
me," is the experience of every human creature. We are 
born blind. We are born without holiness. We are born 
without arithmetic, without oratory, without poetry, without 
skill. We are born without anything. I was born with 
nothing. I did not have the making of myself. I was not 
consulted as to what I would like to be. I have been unfold- 
ing under laws the nature of which and the range of which 
I did not understand. I have been driven hither and thither, 
and have suffered much, and shall suffer unto the end. And 
that which I want, is the medication of hope, and the confi- 
dence that all this wilderness which men go through is the 
training ground on which they are to develop and rise higher 
and higher. What I want to know is, that though invisible, 
the great Heart which in the center sits to control all things 



THE ATONING GOD. 97 

is a Father, and not a despot. If it be Father, then I rejoice 
in afflictions and in infirmities. I am made strong out of 
weakness, and confident out of despair, and glad out of trib- 
ulations. If God be a sovereign who has shown what his 
nature is in that he bowed his head in Jesus Christ, and who 
suffered rather than that I should suffer, I will find my way 
to him, even though it be through myriads of ages. 

Even the poor mute root in the cellar, that lies all winter 
long — the turnip, or the potato — dead, yet knows when April 
and May come, and knows that there is a sun outside, and 
begins to sprout, and finds its way, growing in the dark with 
long, long vines ; and if there be a slit or a crack, it will 
work toward the light ; and shall not I, that am no root nor 
vegetable, no matter through what winters, find my way 
toward the great Center of warmth and light ? If there is 
summer in heaven I will find it. Though I be plunged into 
the depths of hell, I long for such a God as is manifest by 
Jesus Christ ; and I will find him. I shall see him for my- 
self, and not another for me. I shall be like him yet, though 
it may be myriads of ages hence. 

It is this hope and this certainty that give power in spite 
of darkness, and doubt, and skepticism — the hope that we are- 
soaring toward the great Center of the universe, that is love, 
and shall not fail to find it. 

This view of the character of God — not of Christ on earth, 
but of the eternal Father whom he represented to us — lies 
at the root of that sympathy, that humanity, which the Gos- 
pel sets forth. We are taught that he who would be first 
must be servant of all ; that he must be willing to subordi- 
nate his nature for the good of others. A man who will lay 
down his life for his brother is noble ; but the man is still 
nobler who will keep his life and all the time, purposely, 
patiently, and with long-suffering, use it for his brother — f 
for the unappreciative, for the unrequiting, for the un-j 
cleanly. The man who has such a sense, of benevolence! 
that he can perpetually lift up by his sympathy and kindness 
those who do not thank him and repay him, and who are not 
apparently benefited by his service to them — that is the man 
who has in him the spirit that was in Jesus Christ, who died 



98 THE ATONING QOD. 

not for those that had loved him and longed for his coming, 
and who came not to open prison-doors to those that reached 
out imploring hands, saying " Rescue ! rescue !" 

God showed his love in that he died for us while yet we 
were his enemies. He showed his love for us in that he suf- 
fered for our sake at every step of unfolding in this life while 
we were at such a distance from true, disinterested requital 
and gratitude — from everything like the divine disposition. 
God is obliged to hear us as sick babes are borne in the arms 
of nurses, through all the years of our lives. And when at 
last we come to the heavenly gate, we are none of us to enter 
into the land of the blest because we shall say, (i Behold, I am 
accordant, symmetric, perfected ! " 'None of us are to go 
into the heavenly land by reason of the many good deeds that 
we have performed. Every one of us, entering in, will say, 
" I am come borne by the motherhood and fatherhood of 
God, who has taken pity on me in my distress ; and I am 
what I am by the wondrous love and care of God. Open, ye 
gates, that I may see Him who loved me, and died for me. 
Open, ye long ranks between me and my God, that I may be- 
hold that love and salvation which has by its virtue and power 
never let men alone, but has drawn them upward and outward, 
as the sun draws flowers from the soil. I shall not enter 
heaven by reason of what I have achieved. I shall open no 
gates as the conqueror of a besieged city, to take possession of 
'that which is mine. I shall not, either, go to heaven as a 
pauper or beggar, but with my head lifted up, and with my 
heart full of gladness, and with my soul vibrating with joy. 
I shall go as one redeemed by the love of Christ, by the love 
of God the Father, and by the ministration of the Holy Spirit : 
I shall go as an infinite beneficiary. I shall go to the Source 
of all bounty and sweetness and happiness, and lay down my 
crown, saying, " Not unto me, not unto me, but unto thy 
name, be all the glory and the power, forever and forever." 

This is my Gospel — the tidings of a God who is, out of his 
own patience and suffering, working the salvation of the uni- 
verse. Yea, and amen! 



THE ATONING GOB. 90 

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We lift up our thoughts to thee, our Father, not as they do who 
stand in thy presence ; for we see through a glass darkly, and they face 
to face. To them are no more such mysteries as bewilder us. They he- 
hold, backward looking, that which they have been, and that from 
which they have been delivered. The higher understand the lower 
things ; while the lower cannot reach to those that are higher. We 
look for the retreating forms of those who are gone from us, and 
wonder if they remember us. We wonder if they are the same, or if, 
by the translation of death, they are so changed that we are out of 
sympathy with them, and they with us. We wonder at their occupa- 
tions. We marvel in regard to a thousand things. Out-reaching 
thoughts concerning them are shot forth by affection. We yearn for 
them. But there comes to us no answer from them — no touch, no 
help ; but often*darkness and heart-ache, and trouble, thick and deep. 
Thou art the Light of the world: why are thy children in darkness? 
Thou art the soul's Bread : why do we hunger? Thou art the Cap- 
tain of our salvation : why are we struggling in the wilderness, unled? 
Thou art the Saviour, the Redeemer: why are we thralled? Thou 
didst come to open the prison door, and to break the chain, and to 
set the captive free ; and yet, behold the moaning of captives, and 
hear the sounds of chains everywhere. 

O Lord our God, we look away from the reality of experience to 
what we believe — to that which is revealed to us by faith ; and we 
cheer ourselves, we hardly know how, to bear our lot, aspiring 
vaguely, yearning strongly, and yet without definite apprehension. 
But all this thou kno west; for thou hast been tempted in all points 
like as we are, without sin, though we are tempted with much sin ; 
and we believe this, that whatever may be reserved in the future, 
thou art our Elder Brother, our Forerunner, our Mediator, our In- 
tercessor, our loving Friend, our sustaining Power ; and nothing shall 
overthrow the hope and the trust which we put in thee. Neither 
height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor the 
fear of conscience, nor remorse, nor sorrow, shall separate us from 
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. All the way we are 
ignorant of; but of this we have abiding trust, and in it we have the 
utmost faith that when we shall see thee as thou art, everything that 
is good in us will spring toward thee ; that all that is strong in us will 
seem to have been borrowed of thee. We shall know why we are 
called sons of God. We shall feel thy presence breathing life and 
balm into all our nature. We shall be held back from trouble. We 
shall be lifted up above every infirmity. We shall stand in immutable 
manhood. We shall be under the influence of a higher manhood than 
we have ever yet known upon earth. We shall rejoice with a joy un- 
speakable and full of glory — and that forever and forever. 

In this hope we desire to purify ourselves, to walk patiently, and 
to discharge, as best we may, and according to the measure of our 
knowledge and our strength, all the duties that are incumbent upon 
us, having this rest of soul, that whatever we lack Jesus hath it; 
that wherever we are weak thou art strong ; and that thou wilt lift 



100 THE ATONING GOD. 

us up with infinite helpfulness, and wilt hear us from strength to 
strength, every one of us, until we shall stand in Zion and before 
God. 

For the greatness of this faith we render thee humble thanks this 
morning ; and we pray that Jesus Christ may he made unto us to-day 
more of wisdom and more of righteousness. May he be made to us 
all that we need. And as in him we live and move and have our 
being, so may we feel that his strength is ours, that his goodness is 
ours, and that we shall walk unconquered and unconquerable through 
Him who loved us and gave himself for us. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest this morning, in a special sense, 
upon all these who are gathered together, according to their need. 
May all those who mourn because thou hast stricken* them sore, have 
borne in upon them a sense of God's great mercy in the midst of 
afflictions ; and may they realize, as never before, that which thou 
art saying to every tried and troubled soul : For the present it is not 
joyous but grievous; but afterwards, my children, it shall work 
peaceable fruit of righteousness. And we pray that everywhere this 
suffering may lead hearts to God in a sweet confiding faith. While 
they cannot see, may they be able to say, Though he slay me, yet will 
I trust him. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to all those who are 
drawn toward thee in importunate petition. Remember, we beseech 
of thee, those with whom is sickness, and who long for the recovery 
of their beloved, and appeal to thee in prayer without ceasing. We 
pray that thou wilt be with all those who are, with sore and troubled 
hearts, praying to-day for those who are not sick of body but 
sick of soul. Draw near to all those who are vehemently tried by 
their various tanglements and relationships in life. Hear them; 
and may they have boldness to draw near to thee. Thou that hast 
been able by reason of thine own troubles to succor those who are in 
trouble ; thou that hast pity upon those who are out of the way, we 
pray that thou wilt draw near to all those who are in the conscious- 
ness of their dereliction or weakness and fallibleness, scarcely daring 
to cry unto thee, or who have courage to address thee with only a 
feeble faith, saying, I believe : help thou mine unbelief. 

And we pray that thou wilt draw near to all those on whose souls 
rest clouds ; who wander about unknowing, and yet longing to know ; 
who drift as upon a sea in the darkness of an unstarred night. O 
Lord our God, thou that art the Comforter of age?, forth from the 
infinite recesses of the mercy and pity of God, canst thou not, upon 
all that need, pour abundantly that sustaining and refreshing Spirit 
by which they shall be enabled to renew their strength and confidence 
in thee, so that in the midst of night, they may stand as they who 
stand in the morning. 

May thy blessing rest upon all the families that are gathered to- 
gether in this place ; upon all those who are with us, and upon all 
those who are absent from us ; upon all whom we love. Remember 
any who are upon the sea, and any who are in foreign lands, and any 
who are scattered by thy providence in distant parts of our own land. 
Will the Lord be with them to-day, and breathe upon them the breath 



THE ATONING GOD. 101 

of the sanctuary. And we pray that far as they may be from us, 
they may never be far from Jesus. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon this whole land. We 
pray that all those who labor for its upbuilding, in whatever bumble 
spheres, and with whatever self-denial, may have the presence and 
enlightenment of the Comforter. We pray for schools and acade- 
mies, for colleges and seminaries of learning, of every kind. We pray 
for all those who seek to straighten the ways of justice. We pray for 
all those who seek to ameliorate the condition of men, and bring in 
all the sweet amenities of humanity. We pray that thou wilt look 
with compassion upon all those who are suffering from the inflictions 
of plague, and are in great distress. May they have not only our 
sympathy but our succor. Wherever there is suffering in this land, 
may the hearts of this people be bound together so that where one 
suffers, all may suffer, and that we may learn to feel that all are ours, 
and that we belong to all. 

We pray not for our own land alone, but for all lands throughout 
the world. Thou hast taught us that the field is the world. Grant 
that we may take into our sympathy the welfare of every nation, as 
if it were our own. May we long for peace, for education, for knowl- 
edge, for things that pertain to the rights of men, and their duties 
toward God and toward each other. We pray that the day of super- 
stition and of darkness may be driven away by the brightness of thy 
coming, and that all those providences which dimly have illumined 
the future, and have encouraged the hearts of many generations, may 
begin to blaze in fulfillment. And may all the earth begin to show 
forth the coming of the Son of God, and the glory of redemption. 
Grant, we pray, that from the rising of the sun to the going down of 
the same, right speedily the name of Jesus may be known and 
honored and loved. 

And to thy name shall be praises immortal. Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Grant, our Father, thy blessing upon the truth. Take away from 
it that imperfection and that unskill which must needs be the result 
of human handling of divine themes. Give to every heart in thy 
presence the sense of need, and out of that the sense of supply. Give 
every one a willingness to see how poor, how sinful and how un- 
worthy he is ; and yet, give to every one who needs a sense of the 
wonder and power and universality and presence of the redeeming 
love of God as it is made manifest by Jesus Christ. And O ! that we 
might, every one of us, be lifted into some such sympathy with thee 
that we might be to each other something of what thou art to 
us. Forbid, since we have been saved a thousand times in our life 
from utter wreck and destruction by thy gentleness, that we should 
go out and lay hold of our brother by the throat, and say, Pay me 



102 THE ATONING GOD. 

what thou owest, and cast him into misery and ruin. Give us hearts 
of compassion. May we manifest that spirit which thou hast shed on 
us. May love reign everywhere. Let thy kingdom be established in 
the hearts of thy children. Cause sympathy, man with man, to spread 
around the world, till the whole earth shall be filled with thy salva- 
tion. And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be the praise 
forever more. Amen, 



♦ 



PRAYER. 



PRAYER. 



" I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, inter- 
cessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men ; for kings, and 
for all that are in authority ; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable 
life in all godliness and honesty."—! Tim. ii. 1, 2. 



I have selected this passage because in its phraseology it 
gives some idea of the breadth of the exercise of prayer which 
really belongs to it, and tends to lift it up out of that narrow, 
and I might say personal and selfish, circuit in which it so 
often moves, and where it is so often contemplated by those 
who are arguing against prayer from grounds of material 
truth. For men have been too much accustomed to regard 
prayer as a mere profitable transaction ; as a running to God, 
as men run to the store, or to the doctor, or to the lawyer 
(never except when they lack something, and wish to procure 
it) making prayer a sort of serviceable errand business. 
They do not ask, therefore, that the ten thousand wants 
of daily life shall be supplied by vigilance, and industry, 
nor through the methods of suffering and enjoying by which 
men are built up and educated, but beg them of God off- 
hand, as if it were his business to supersede his own law, and 
set aside his own method of educating the race, and to give a 
premium to self-indulgence and indolence, instead of adher- 
ing to his system of providing for the needs of men by the 
employment of a certain economy. 

Prayer is, in its fullest conception, the noblest parts of 
the soul in the noblest attitude of communion or converse 
with God. It has in it an element of supplication ; it has in 
it an element of intercession ; it has in it a hundred elements, 
because the generic conception of it is the bringing of the 

Sunday Morning, October 19, 1873. Lesson : John xvii. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nob. 166, 816, 660. 



106 PRAYER. 

soul in its higher faculties into immediate communion with 
God, and giving it perfect liberty. Of course, under such 
circumstances, in differing strains and in different emergen- 
cies, prayer will vary. 

Prayer is not, therefore, the voice of a beggar. It is not 
simply the expression of want. It is the expression, in our 
best hours, and in our best moods, of the best thoughts, the 
best sentiments, the best emotions, the best aspirations, the 
best of everything. If the soul be a mighty estate ; if it 
hath everything of flower and of fruit in it, we bring some- 
thing of everything, and the best, and offer it to God. 
Prayer is not, then, simply a desire that we may have that 
which in the present hour we may need. It is a sense of our 
alliance with our heavenly Father. It is an endeavor to be 
in such converse with Him as a child is during the hour of 
its joy, or of its sorrow, or of its burden, in the presence of 
its earthly parent. It is lifting up the soul out of matter, 
and out of its poor surroundings, into the presence and sym- 
pathy of the Spirit of God, the great Love and Lover. 

From the material side, prayer may be criticised philo- 
sophically, and has been, and is to-day ; but if you look upon 
it from the material side alone, and criticize it, you only crit- 
icize its abuse ; you only criticize what may be a disease, and 
not the thing itself — not its full self — not its ideal self. That 
is psychologic. In its last analysis, prayer is a state of the 
soul in the presence of God. It is the radiancy, the com- 
municativeness, the aspiration, the spontaneous utterance, of 
thought or feeling or words, or all that which is in us in 
those moments when, separating ourselves from every other 
thing, we stand consciously in the presence of our heavenly 
Father. 

Let us look, then, at prayer as it is presented in the New 
Testament, and see if it has not something of this largeness — 
if it is not essentially a condition of the soul in its best mo- 
ments, open and disclosed before God. Look, for one single 
moment, at the construction of our Lord's prayer, which he 
gives, not as a form, but as a universal type, of prayer. 
" After this manner, therefore, pray ye :" 

Pray, not in these words, necessarily, but according to the 



PRAYER. 107 

genius of this prayer. And what is it ? Every word is a 
separate jewel. 

44 Our Father which art in heaven — " 

The One above limitation, above imperfection, above the 
touch of sin and frailty ; the Sovereign ; the Lord God Al- 
mighty ; He who is interpreted by the word " Father," and 
who is " ours " to every man who utters it ; the Being that is 
Father in the most exalted of all possible ways. 

44 Hallowed be thy name." 

The soul's highest and most disinterested aspiration, the 
glorying of a child's love for the honor of a father, is here 
indicated. 

44 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heav- 
en." 

In uttering these simple sentences, the soul finds itself 
walking in the procession of ages among invisible spirits, and 
in that vast stream of tendencies which from eternity to 
eternity is rearing up the kingdom of God, and perfect- 
ing it. 

After this communion with God, this utterance of all that 

is most disinterested and spiritual, then comes, 

44 Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as 
we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver 
us from evil." 

All of these petitions are of such a tone that they become 
specific of the generic phrases with which the prayer opens. 
For the honor of God, and for the advancement of his cause, 
specific things are asked — support, forgiveness, defense. 

So, then, if you look into the Lord's Prayer, you shall 
find that it implies the noblest of all mental conditions and 
experiences. It is not a whine ; it is not a long confession ; 
it is not wrestling : it is the effiuence of a blossoming soul on 
which has fallen the sense of God's love. 

If you look again at the prayer of our Lord which I read 
in your hearing as a part of the opening service, which he 
uttered near the close of his ministry, and in which he be- 
sought God for his disciples, and for all who had caught the 
sacred contagion of love, or should do it, through the ages, 
you will see how lofty that strain is. You will see how far it 
is removed from personal and selfish'supplication in his own 



108 PRAYER. 

behalf. Yea, and when, in that mysterious trial of the Gar- 
den, he was borne down with woes undescribed and inde- 
scribable, in that hour in which, pressed to the uttermost, he 
had recognition of his own suffering, he besought God that 
the cup might pass from him, he sprang up from that per- 
sonal petition, instantly, saying, " Nevertheless, not my will, 
but thine be done"; thus joining, in a petition of the ex- 
tremest anguish, his own welfare to the honor and glory of 
God's name. 

Consider the subject of prayer as it is laid out for us in 
the history of the apostle Paul. In him it was the enthusi- 
asm of fidelity, of admiration, of loye, out of which he prayed, 
and from which, as from a central motive, he commands 
prayer upon all the disciples. He says : 

" Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving." 

All his experience of day and night, everything that he 
had suffered, wrought out in him a sense of divine benefi- 
cence ; and whenever, during his life, he came into the pres- 
ence of God, he had some reason for thanksgiving. 

" In everything, by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let 
your request be made known unto God." 

Go to God, not with an empty scrip, asking your daily 
crust : go to him in the full recognition of his bounty and 
love and goodness, and pour your prayer through the heart's 
warmth of admiration, and adoration, and thanksgiving. 

In another place he says : 

"Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation ; continuing instant in 
prayer." 

In still another place he says : 

" Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers." 
Speaking in the language of personal friendship, and so 
revealing his daily life — how he bore up his beloved ones in- 
cessantly in his thoughts, and communed with them in the 
presence of God, at the feet of the One who was pierced — he 
says again : - 

" I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, making re- 
quest with joy." 

Consider the whole state of mind implied by such language 

as that 



PRATER. 109 

In writing to Timothy, he says : 

" I thank G-od that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee 
in my prayers night and day." 

Take one other passage, which is recorded in Ephesians : 
"For this cause I how my knees unto the Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 
that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to he 
strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man." 

He has risen np to the very highest atmosphere of inward- 
ness and spirituality. 

"That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being 
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all 
saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to 
know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be 
filled with all the fulness of God." 

Now, I aver that in the most disinterested and the most 
resplendent friendships of the noblest natures there is room 
for an interchange of offices — for giving and taking ; I de- 
clare that it is consistent with the very magnanimity of 
a true friendship to ask help, to ask sympathy, to ask succor ; 
but what would be thought of a friendship that had gone 
down so low that the only suggestion which a person had of 
this relation was that it gave one the opportunity of getting 
indorsements in time of trouble, of getting nursing in time 
of sickness, or of getting a good word spoken from influen- 
tial quarters in time of need ? What if the mere begging or 
gift side was the only thing that came to our thought in con- 
templating friendship ? What is there in the intercourse of 
true friendship that is so enriching as the casting of one's 
self on another ? What gifts can any man offer to you that 
are comparable with those which he gives in trust, and love, 
and praise, and incitement ? That which brings out my soul 
for you,, brings a better gift than my hand can render, even 
in the most desperate emergencies ; for there is nothing that 
can be compared to it in all the coin exchanges that are 
known among men. There is no treasure like that which 
the soul has. 

How sweet are gifts which come from love, whether they 
be of intrinsic value, or only associational ! When two per- 
sons have walked together, and interchanged the highest and 
purest and noblest things, if one plucks from the hawthorn 



110 PFAYER. 

or some other near bush a blossom for a memorial, how 
sacred is it, as though it had grown by the throne of God it- 
self ! That flower is of little intrinsic value ; yet how is it 
perfumed and stained through with the odor and color of 
heaven ! And the memories of it — how sacred are they ! Or 
if, instead of that, one should take from the neck a simple 
locket, and give it as a souvenir — as a token of mutual pledges 
and aspirations and hopes — how precious would such a gift be 
beyond any other that the most exquisite skill, dealing with 
the rarest values, could construct ! For it is the soul that 
gives value to these things. 

But what if love were to become so degenerate that the 
moment the friend left the house another should rush in and 
ask, " Did he give you anything ?" and the answer being, 
"]STo," should say, " Humph ! what is the use of his visiting 
here if he does not give you anything ?" 

Our souls rise into the very personal presence of God, and 
have the consciousness of God's life breathing through them ; 
the nobler passages of our being are opened ; the sense of eter- 
nal blessedness dawns on us ; the favor of God, and the love 
of God, and the bounty of God, as expressed through Jesus 
Christ, come home to our realization ; and there are men so 
degenerate in their conceptions of prayer that when we return 
to our consciousness after such high communings, they say, 
" What is the use of praying ? Do you suppose that you will 
get loaves of bread by praying for them ? Do you suppose 
that harvests will be given to you in answer to prayer ? Do 
you suppose prayer will protect you against storms, and re- 
lieve you from diseases ?" 

Is the hope of getting something the only thing for which 
men come into each other's presence ? Is there nothing- 
higher than gifts ? Is there not something more royal than 
abundance ? If the soul may lift itself up into the presence 
of God, so that it feels, " I am a king, I am a priest, I am 
God's own child, and I am an heir of God and a joint-heir 
with Christ to an eternal inheritance," is there no remunera- 
tion, no royalty, in that presence of God ? I say that a true 
friendship must include the interchange of interest, of confi- 
dence, and of love. There is, indeed, also the advantage of a 



PRAYER. Ill 

friend's kind offices ; but that is lower down. It is the last 
and the least thing to be considered in connection with 
friendship. And often that is beneficial to us more on ac- 
count of the testimony which it bears of the kind feeling of 
him who gives, than on account of the intrinsic value of the 
gift. 

It is right in me to say, " Give me my daily bread," leav- 
ing it to God to give it in any way that it pleases him — to 
minister it through one agency or another. This point is 
never expounded. There is no word of philosophical expla- 
nation given in regard to the manner in which prayers 
shall be answered. The petition is, simply, " Give us our 
bread ; forgive us our sin ; lead us away from tempting ; de- 
liver us from evil." The language is given without comment. 
It does not imply whether the things asked are to be wrought 
out by our being stimulated to work for them, whether we 
are to be inspired to take care of ourselves, or not. Paul 
and other eminent saints have been accustomed to plead with 
God for favors, doubtless ; but it is in the higher atmosphere 
of the soul that those elements of prayer become lawful which 
imply intimacy with God. 

Therefore I hear the two extremes of this subject of pray- 
er expounded. I hear men arguing, seriously and long, to 
show that God is a prayer-hearing' God, and will answer 
prayer ; and to prove it they cite instances which have come 
uader their notice. Mr. So-and-s*o was on the point of 
starvation, and he prayed for food, and a sheep came to his 
door, and he ate it ; and so his prayer was answered. An- 
other man wanted wood, and he could not get any, and he 
prayed, and at night somebody came and left a load in his 
yard ; and so his prayer was answered. Another man had a 
note to pay, and he could not get the money, and he prayed, 
and somebody came and brought him the money ; and his 
prayer was answered, also. 

I do not doubt that there are answers of prayer on that 
lower plane ; but this I say : it is an absolute vulgarization of 
the whole grand theme of prayer to represent it from that 
side. It is so low that it is a stench in the nostrils of any 
man who has a sense of what is the altitude and glory of 



112 PRAYER. 

prayer. I would not permit a man to call me his friend who 
had no other friendship for me but to bring me fodder and 
supply me with something for my body. The friend himself 
is the best answer to our wants. I do not disdain these 
lower offices, among others ; but when prayer is argued as be- 
ing true on this low ground, chiefly and continually, until 
meu come to think that praying is like dropping orders into 
the Post Office, or sending around boys to the store, it is de- 
graded far below its real character. True praying, beginning 
here, ends in the kingdom of God ; and whatever comes short 
of that is such fantastic vapor, such effluvia, as to be un- 
worthy of the name. And anybody who represents prayer as 
consisting in these lower and perishing elements demeans it, 
dishonors God, degrades the soul, and under-estimates that 
altitude which belongs to us in our better moods before our 
heavenly Father. Prayer, chiefly, is the soul's communion 
with God. It is chiefly translation. It is chiefly transfigura- 
tion. It was worth more to Peter, James and John, to stand 
for an hour and see the spirits dawn through the heaven, and 
talk with Christ, whose face shone as the sun, and whose 
raiment was white as the light, than if the three tabernacles 
which they craved had been built of diamonds and rubies 
on the mountain-top. It is what we get by the soul that 
makes us rich. 

In regard to these lesser wants, it is not always best that 
they should be supplied. • It is a great deal better for a man 
who wants to be relieved from pain to find that he can bear 
it than to have it taken away from him. It is a great deal 
better for one who wants to be relieved from sorrows to find 
that he can walk through sorrows unharmed, than to have 
them removed from him. It is a great deal better for one 
who suffers lack and wants abundance to have some invisible 
inspiration come into his soul by which he can say, " I have 
all things even when I have nothing, if God be mine/' than 
to receive that .abundance. When we have the inspiration of 
reason, and of faith, and of hope, and of conscience, and of 
love ; when the influence of the higher sphere rests down 
upon us ; when we are walking with God, and abiding with 
him, then we have everything that we want, and we do not 



PRAYER. 113 

feel the lack of these lower blessings. We are brought into such 
a state that we no longer crave them, or think about them. 

Our wants, it seems to me, are very much like a dande- 
lion blossom — or rather that which follows the blossom. A 
man goes to God to ask for something the need of which is 
oppressing him ; and when he has come consciously into the 
divine presence, he has forgotten what brought him there, 
and he pours out his soul in love, and thanksgiving, and 
hope, and rapture, and goes away, and by and by remembers 
the circumstance, and says, "Why, I did not ask God for 
what I meant to ; I meant to ask him for such and such 
things, and I forgot all about them." The winds of the 
higher heaven blow away a thousand of men's petitions. 
There is no more occasion for them. When the presence of 
God makes the soul consciously rich, it no longer wants out- 
ward mercies. We live low down ; and more than half of all 
the wants which we feel, more than half of all the things 
which we dread, are the result of low living ; so that any- 
thing which exalts us, delivers us from many peculiar necessi- 
ties, and therefore from the need of prayer concerning them. 

You will find abundant confirmation of these thoughts 
in following out their lines in the New Testament. Take, 
for instance, the experience of the apostle Paul. He was 
fairly bedewed with prayer, if one might so say. Day by day 
prayers were to him what dewdrops are on summer mornings 
to fragrant bushes, all of whose leaves are wet. He was 
fragrant with prayer. It was the end of his living. He ex- 
haled before God perpetually. His soul rose up out of care. 
He derived strength from weakness, and wealth from poverty. 
No man ever extracted more than he from a life which was 
such a martyrdom as his was. He declared that he died 
deaths daily ; and yet I affirm that human nature has no- 
where else given utterance to such exquisite phraseology, rep- 
resenting the soul's calmness, and triumph, and blessedness, 
and richness received from God, as that which came from the 
lips of that apostle. As birds that are low down in dusky 
forests, and are chased by owls, escape in the broad sunlight ; 
so our souls, when they are in low, dark places, flying away 
from these up toward God, find release, and sing for joy. 



114 PRAYER. 

Paul prayed for himself. I do not know what he did not 
pray for. He prayed for his friends ; he prayed for 
churches ; he prayed for communities that he wanted to 
see, hut never had seen ; he prayed for his associates ; he 
prayed for magistrates ; he prayed for rulers ; he prayed for 
those that loved him, and for those that hated him ; he 
prayed for God's cause and kingdom everywhere ; he prayed 
day and night ; he prayed in season and out of season. 
Prayer was the continuous action of his soul. 

| Praying, then, is not so much an office as it is the soul's 
whole attitude toward God, so that everything which one does 
he does in conscious communion with God. 

If these views be correct, they will throw a great deal of 
light on the difficulties which lie in the way of men. 

First, consider speculative difficulties. There are many 
persons who study prayer altogether from the side of natural 
law, having taken the lower view of it ; and they exercise 
themselves in questionings and arguments as to whether 
prayer can he answered or not. I say that prayer is the 
highest psychological experience ; that therefore it runs out- 
side of the range of material science ; and that no man who is 
only competent to judge by the senses, and of the qualities of 
matter or material things, is in a position to judge of the 
nature of prayer, or of its reality, its scope, or its indirect 
consequences. This is a chain of argument that has not 
been enough brought out. 

A man asks in prayer that he may write a Novum Or- 
ganum ; and his friends say /to him, "Oh, fool ! Do you 
think that God is going to answer that prayer ? Do you 
think that he is going to so operate on your mind that you, 
who never could write, who have no talent for writing, shall 
be able to write a book like that ? Do you think you 
are going to have a Novum Organum written, and printed, 
and given to you because you ask it ?" 

But suppose a man, in offering such a prayer, comes into 
the presence of God, and attains a. state of most ecstatic ex- 
altation, so that every power of his nature is brought under 
the direct influence of the divine mind ; and suppose that in 
zhis exalted state, which comes from love and communion 



PRAYER. 115 

and gratitude, his mind, eclaircised and stimulated, begins to 
act, and performs some noble literary feat, accomplishes 
some wonderful oratorical achievement, or produces some 
sweet hymn or poem that charms the ages, does he not re- 
ceive an answer to his prayer ? Is not that an answer to 
prayer which, by inspiration, so empowers every part of a 
man's soul that he becomes reduplicated in his forces, 
more unerring in his judgment, and more competent to think 
and do a thousand things which he could not otherwise think 
and do ? Do you not know the difference between an army 
led by a man who has no courage and who inspires no 
confidence, and that same army led by a general whose 
very name makes every soldier's heart bound with zeal and 
enthusiasm ? Do you not know that many and many a 
battle is lost because men are not themselves, or because 
that which is in them is not aroused and brought out ; and 
that many and many a battle is gained because men's 
souls are fired, and they are made to feel that they are 
doubly men ? Have you never noticed how strong the 
child becomes in the performance of duty under the smiles 
of the parent ? Did you never see how much better a 
boy fought when his companions clapped him on and en- 
couraged him ? Are you not aware how all the influences of 
society multiply the power of men and their successes ? And 
shall the soul, that lifts itself into the very presence of Power, 
that is able to conceive of God, and that takes on the divine 
atmosphere and stimulus — shall it not, in its higher and 
normal action, be more and do more than it otherwise could 
be or do ? And is not the answer to prayer the result which 
is wrought out in those elevated conditions to which prayer 
leads ? 

I pray to God, saying, ee Give me roses ;" and up come 
clouds. I pray for roses, and God sends rain. Very well ; 
do not clouds and rain bring roses ? They may bring them 
in circuitous ways that I do not expect them to come in, but 
they bring them nevertheless. The Opifex maximus, the 
Architect of the universe, works out our wants, not accord- 
ing to our ideas, but along the line of his own supreme 
knowledge. I think the answer to prayer is that which gives 



116. PRAYER. 

inspiration to the souls of men ; and he who walks in the 
presence of God, and lives under the inspiration of his down- 
brooding touch, has in himself the great causes which will 
work out the answers of prayer — and that in the higher , 
spheres, as well as in the lower. Are not se ntiments _ re- f 
alities as well as physical objects ? Is love, the ultimate ' 
of human life, nothing ? Are not peace, joy, and faith 
anything ? Is the dirt that Wallace trod on a real, scientific, 
substantial reality, and shall the indomitable hope and 
courage that were in his soul go for nothing ? Is all that 
exists outside of mere material facts of no account ? Is 
there nothing but what the sensuous faculties can feel or see ? 
Is there no G-od ? Is there no invisibility ? Is there noth- 
ing but body, matter, mud, very dust ? I should think we 
had come from the dust, and that we had not got a great 
way from it yet ! 

Another reason why prayer is not more in vogue and 
more in the faith of men, is the low and selfish forms of 
it which are so prevalent. For, what are your prayers ? 
What is your daily habit of prayer ? Is it the higher realms 
in which you are living in your thoughts ? You need not 
say what they are ; I know what they are ; but take the 
daily round of men's prayers, and what is it, but an extremely 
low, secular, materializing series of petitions ? 

Where men begin their prayers by piling up old, long, 
familiar, worn, empty titles ; where they commence their 
prayers by saying, " thou omnipotent, omniscient, omni- 
present, all-seeing, ever-living, blessed Potentate, Lord God 
Jehovah !" I should think they would take breath. " Why," 
it is asked, " are not such titles as these right ?" Yes.; but 
what should be the state of a man's mind when he can fill up 
such big words as these with the reality of their meaning ? 
That there are extreme moods, that there are great and crit- 
ical times, when God has, by the breaths of heaven and the 
currents of earth, moved men in these higher elements ; that 
there are periods when these words are as majestic as God 
himself in the souls of men, there is no doubt ; but think of 
a man in his family, hurried for his breakfast or to get away 
to his business, praying in such a strain ! He has a note 



PRAYER. 11? 

coming due, and it is going to be paid to-day ; and he feels 
buoyant ; and he goes down on his knees like a cricket on the 
hearth, and piles up these majestically moving phrases 
about God. Then he goes on to say with hasty formality 
that he is a sinner. Yes, he is proud to say that he is a sin- 
ner. He goes with the multitude in this respect. Then he 
asks that he may be forgiven, and that his heart may be 
changed. And then he asks for his daily bread. He has it ; 
and he can always ask for it when he has it. After running 
on thus briefly, in the old stereotyped way, he winds up 
with, " For thine is the kingdom and the power and the 
glory, forever and forever, Amen." Then he jumps up, and 
goes over to the city, and attends to his business affairs. At 
night he comes back, and if he is not disturbed by sleepi- 
ness, by company, or by something else, he has " evening 
prayers ;" but he never dreams of approaching his Father in 
heaven in any other than this hard, formal, matter-of-fact 
way. And he is called a "praying man !" A praying 
man f I should sooner call myself an ornithologist because I 
ate a chicken once in a while for my dinner. In out- 
side affairs, does occasionally having something to do with 
them constitute an acquaintance with them ? Does any man 
really pray who does not know the inner man that belongs to 
nis nature ? Does any man pray in reality who has not a 
consciousness of God present with him ? He that goes to 
God "must believe that he is, and that he is a re warder of 
them that diligently seek him." How large is the interpreta- 
tion of that saying ! He that goes to God, goes to One whom 
the heavens cannot contain, nor the earth, which is his foot- 
stool. How lordly is the soul that mounts up into some sort 
of conception of the amplitude, the grandeur, the glory and 
the desirableness of the Father in heaven ! 

Now, I do not wonder that, when men pray, as they often 
do, regulation prayers, they have a great deal of doubt whether 
prayer is anything more than a kind of punctuation in life, 
separating the different parts by commas, and colous, and pe- 
riods, and other stops, so that they shall not huddle them- 
selves too closely together. Often it is a very vulgar and low 
life that they lead, and their living takes away not only their 



118 PRAYER. 

own but other men's faith in prayer. Yet I never found any 
man who prayed through sorrows, through great distresses, 
through darkness; I never found a man who prayed with a spirit 
that had life and power in it, and who was by prayer lifted into 
his higher and nobler self — I never found such a man who 
could bear to listen, for a moment, to any argument against 
prayer. If prayer has been to you like sparkling wine ; if it 
has filled your soul with ecstatic joy, not once nor twice, but 
a hundred times ; and. if you bear witness, " The life which I 
now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, 
who loved me and gave himself for me," who can establish a 
battering-ram against your experience ? Who can take away 
the confidence which it breathes ? 

Then, another reason why people doubt prayer is because, 
to a large extent, it is occasional. Men pray when they are 
pushed to it. Prayer is not life to them ; but, to be effica- 
cious to you, prayer, preeminently, must be your very life. 

Who could write poetry that had never practised writing ? 
If a man who for twenty-five or thirty years had not taken up 
a pen, thinking it convenient to write a poem, should sit 
down and try to write one, would he succeed ? Suppose a 
man who had never addressed an audience, or framed a sen- 
tence, should undertake to deliver an oration, would he suc- 
ceed ? Could a man be a writer or an orator under such 
circumstances ? A man cannot write until he has learned 
and practiced writing ; and a man cannot speak until he has 
learned and practiced speaking. The mechanic, if he is to 
succeed, must have experience in his business, and so must 
the merchant. We know that education and training are es- 
sential to the attainment of the lower objects of life ; and 
shall those which are unspeakably higher, and which call into 
play the nobler faculties and laws of our being, be had just 
for the trying ? You can draw a stop of an organ, and it will 
give the sound which belongs to that stop ; but you cannot 
do the same" thing with the soul. If yon would enjoy the , 
richest fruits of prayer, you must abound in prayer ; you 
must live in the conscious presence of God ; you must be in 
constant and intimate communion with him. Then, there 
can be no doubt, no skepticism, in your mind as to the effi- 



PRAYER. 119 

cacy of prayer. It is the infrequency of prayer, as wei.1 as the 
economic view which is taken of it, that breeds doubt in the 
minds of so many men on this subject. 

The unwise use of forms is also a reason why so many 
doubt the efficacy of prayer. I do not disesteem forms ; but 
I think they are like walking-chairs that are used for teaching 
children how to walk, but which are dispensed with as soon 
as they have served that purpose. I do not say that there are 
not emergencies when persons might much better pray in 
the language of another than in their own language ; but cer- 
tainly precomposed forms of prayer are not the best. They 
may be relatively good, they may be better than nothing under 
given circumstances ; but they are not to be preferred. 

I see a man take out from his pocket a spelling-book in his 
intervals of leisure, and spell "a-b, ab ; b-a, ba ; h-a-y, 
hay," and so on ; and I say, "A person ought not to be car- 
rying around a spelling-book all his life ;" and he says, 
" Why, how could a person learn to spell without a spelling- 
book ? If it were not for this old book I could not get along. " 
Now, a spelling-book is useful for children to learn to spell 
from ; but when they have learned to spell, it is to be left 
behind. And in respect to precomposed forms of prayer, in 
the beginning they may help, but as soon as a person limits 
his spiritual flight by the range of fixed words, or thoughts or 
feelings, that moment he has of necessity dwarfed himself. 
There may be reasons of order and decorum why it is proper 
that public prayers should be read ; I do not deny that there 
are strong reasons on that side ; but if that is so, then all 
the more the heart ought to develop itself in private, not by 
employing precomposed forms of prayer, but by exercising 
the largest liberty in praying. When persons go privately 
into the presence of God, there should be the utmost freedom 
in the outflow of their emotions. It may be indecorous for a 
man to parade his weakness in oral prayer before a great congre- 
gation who would be led into a misapprehension by that weak- 
ness ; but a man who is weak in prayer, going alone into the 
presence of God, should go, not walking as if he were the 
prophet Isaiah, or the seer John, or the apostle Paul, but just 
as he is, in his ignorance, in his inferiority, in his perpetual 



120 PRAYER. 

stumblings. The very thought of prayer is, that it is some- 
thing by which a man may lift himself up out from under the 
dominion of physicalness, of materiality, and become baptized 
into the presence and power of a serene and spiritual God, 
where he shall find himself wrought upon by influences such 
that he shall be able to carry himself as a man, and not as an 
animal. The imposition of set forms of prayer upon a man 
girds him ; laces him ; cramps him ; confines him. JSTo man 
can be free in prayer who prays habitually and always ac- 
cording to precomposed forms. 

Let me say, further, that where the habit of prayer is such 
as I have described, where it is the flight of everything in us 
into the presence of God ; where it is abiding there ; where it 
is sunning one's self in the light of God's countenance ; where 
it is walking in sweet familiarity hand in hand with the 
Savior; where it is enduring "as seeing him who is inyisi- 
ble " — where this is the habit of prayer, it should be encour- 
aged. It is that which we should seek. And this being true, 
it becomes necessary that we should everywhere carry it out 
into our pleasures and our business avocations. And either 
our living will correspond with our praying, or our praying 
will be such as we dare not take into the presence of our God. 
Prayer works not on narrow lines. It consists not simply of 
asking for something. It works through a celestial mag- 
netizing of the whole soul. It lifts a man above the in- 
firmities of the flesh. It brings him into the region of 
supernal power. It gives him the inspiration of God himself. 

Sometimes prayer may be answered by the granting of the 
specific thing asked for — if it is best. Sometimes it may be 
answered by the taking away of the desire. Sometimes it 
may be answered by that bright shining of hope and love 
which comes down on the soul. God answers prayer just as 
in nature he answers the wishes of the husbandman. He 
makes the clouds to rain, and the sun to shine ; and forth 
from the earth come ten thousand voices of birds and insects, 
singing and chirping, making the air vocal, and filling our 
hearts full of song. And all things grow and flourish under 
the influence of the great vivifying Force of nature. 

So, when we walk with God, and live with him, our 



PRAYER. 121 

prayers are answered, whatever we may ask for, because to 
love, all things are lawful. We pray for whatever we want, 
because we love God, because we are near to him, because we 
adore him, and because we are enraptured with the thought 
of his glory ; and he sends answers to our prayers through 
ourselves, and outside of ourselves, in ten thousand ways. It is 
not of half so much importance that we should know how the 
thing comes, as that we should know that the thing does 
come — peace ; rest ; purity ; hope ; aspiration ; courage in 
darkness ; insight into the life to come ; the prolongation of 
our manhood into the eternal sphere; that we may feel the 
crown before ever it is put upon our head; that we may hear 
songs before ever they are uttered by us, sung by those who 
await us in heaven. 



122 PRAYER. 

PRAYER BEFORE THE HEltMOft 

We desire to draw near to thee together, our Father. We come 
together because we have experienced thy common protection, and 
the common bounty of thy providence, and the mercies and comforts 
which have been extended to us in daily life. We desire to make 
mention of all thy goodness ; to acknowledge thee as our sovereign 
Heart and Lord ; to rejoice in thee as our Father and our benefactor. 
We pray that thou wilt accept our love. We mourn that it is feeble, 
that it is inconstant, and that it hath in it so little of control. We 
pray for deeper sincerity, and more earnestness of affection. We pray 
that we may have that faith which works by love ; by which thou 
shalt be brought nearer to as ; by which thou shalt be coupled with 
all our affairs ; by which we discern thee, not afar off, but near at 
hand, in ourselves, in all our affairs, in every surrounding circum- 
stance. Grant, our Father, that we may have, in a richer and 
more perfect way, the sense that we are in very truth thy children 
— the children of God, of the household of faith ; and this, not because 
of our own mind and will, but because of thy bounty and grace. For 
we love thee because thou first lovedst us. It was the outreaching of 
thine arms that kept us around about thy feet. It was thy voice that 
called us, and not ours that called thee. And every thought and 
aspiration which we have toward thee, our very importunity, is 
awakened in us by thee. For the Spirit maketh intercession within 
us and through us with groanings which cannot be uttered. The 
Spirit knows our want better than we, and understands the reason of 
our trouble better than we. And more blessed than the parent is to 
the child art thou to us, filling us with rest, with inspiration, with 
hidden strength, with hope and with courage, in all things that tend 
upward, and are divine. 

Now we pray that thou wilt grant to every one who is seeking a 
clearer sky, an unobstructed horizon in the truth, that he may day 
by day gain a knowledge of God in the doing of his will. Grant that 
we may, every one of us, in the Lord Jesus Christ, find on the hither 
side our birthright with him, and thitherward his affiliation with God ; 
so that in him we may approach the Father, understanding him and 
his disposition toward us. We pray that thou wilt help every one who 
labors and is heavy laden to come to thee. Help every one that hath 
doubts and fears, aud is repelled from religion thereby. Grant that 
every one may find in thee the yoke and the burden which shall not 
tax nor task, but bring strength, and strength to be employed in use- 
fulness. Grant, O thou great Giver, that the inward and divine 
power of truth may be infused into every needy and hungry heart. 
How many there are who wander to and fro, saying, Who will show 
us any good? How many there are who cannot fiud truth in things 
external ! O thou who in every age hast inspired thy servants that 
have led men, canst not thou breathe the Holy Ghost upon hearts that 
are needy; that hunger and thirst; that are consciously falling into 
the darkness of death? Thou that art the source of light and love and 
joy, lift upon every one who desires to know the truth, and to walk 
therein, the light of thy countenance. May every one hear inwardly 



PRAYER. 123 

the unvocalized call of God, saying, This is the way : walk ye in it ; 
and may those who walk in it behold that it is Jesus. We pray, () 
Lord our God, that thou wilt become more and more dear, through 
thy Son, to every one who has tasted thy graciousness, and the sweet- 
ness of thy love in the soul. 

We pray for those who need humility; for those who need 
help to overcome pride; for those who need disinterestedness, 
and are in strife and struggle day by day against their easily beset- 
ting selfishness. We pray for those who are abusing their power, 
and treading upon their fellow men whose burden they should 
bear, and whom they should carry in the arms of kiudness. Take 
thou away from them hardness of heart, and teach them the royal 
lesson of suffering, rather than to make others suffer. More and 
more teach those who are in communion with thee to rise above 
care, above trouble, above the corroding anxieties of life, above the 
battle in which they are called to stand. May they be able to put 
on the whole armor of God ; may they be able to equip themselves 
with weapons of offense and of defense ; may they be able to stand, 
and having done all to stand. We pray that thou wilt thus give 
us a sense of thine overruling sovereignty, of the certainty and 
righteousness of thy providence, and of the nearness of the life that 
is above this life. Give us such a sense of our nearness to those that 
are in the spirit land, and to thee, the Head of all, that we may walk 
without disturbance; that we may walk in the midst of care and 
trouble with a perpetual song, and triumph before we triumph, and 
overcome before we overcome, conquering and to conquer, by faith 
in Him who loved us, and loves us still. Let love work mightily in 
us, that we may achieve the victory at last. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all the households that 
are represented here, and especially upon the little children. Teach 
the parents how to rear those whom thou hast given them, as voices of 
God speaking to them of the better land. And as they are taught by 
their parents to call the name of God, so may they teach those parents 
their relations to thee in patience, in self-sacrifice, in disinterestedness, 
and in faith : and we pray that thou wilt grant that those who are 
carrying up the young to man's estate may be saved from the temp- 
cations which beat vehemently upon them. May they be able to gird 
themselves in the armor of God, and be proof against seductions. We 
pray that they may become manful, truthful, full of honor, full of 
sensibility, and courageous for that which is true, fearing only that 
which is evil. Grant to all who are in the midst of life, bearing the 
tests and conflicts which must needs come in this world, grace ac- 
cording to their time, that every day they may be equal to the emer- 
gencies thereof. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt remember any who are sick. 
Be with them very graciously, as an angel in their presence. And 
grant them strength, O Lord, that such as are appointed unto death 
may behold no gloomy exit, but rather the rising joy of immortality. 

Be with all who are mourning for their departed ones. Be with 
all who are bruised of heart, and to whom come many vague mem- 
ories of days gone by, that come not again. Lift them above time 



124 PRAYER. 

and sense into the great realm which is above time and sense. Grant 
that they may walk with God to-day, and he comforted. 

We pray that thy blessing may be upon those who are absent from 
us, — our dearly beloved, — upon the sea, in distant lands, or in our own 
land. Wherever they are, may the blessing cf the Sabbath and the 
Lord of the Sabbath be theirs. 

Remember, O Lord, thine own churches in this city, and all in 
fchem who are laboring according to their light and their strength 
for the cause of God, and the welfare of men. Take away every 
root of bitterness, all alienations, all those secret and divisory 
influences which so often, through the conscience, lead to separation 
and harm. Bring together, in the simplicity of truth and love, all 
those, of every name, who work in thy cause, so that they may glorify 
Jesus Christ ; so that the whole brotherhood of men may walk to- 
gether in undivided ranks. We thank thee for the influences that are 
tending toward greater unity. We pray that all causes of estrange- 
ment may be taken out of the way, and that thy cause may prosper 
through the diligence and fidelity of thy people. 

Remember all parts of our land. Be pleased to bless the Presi- 
dent of these United States, and all who are joined with him in 
authority. Remember our courts, and the magistrates therein. 
Remember the citizens of this country. We pray that our laws may 
be just, and that the -execution of them may be impartial. May 
knowledge be spread abroad amidst all our people— especially among 
those who are perishing for lack of vision. 

Deal gently, our Father, we beseech thee, with any parts of our 
land where thy hand afflicts with sorrow and grievous sickness. Be 
pleased to sustain the sufferers, and to raise up about them such 
sympathy as shall bring them all needed succor in the day of their 
fierce adversity. May we not take pride in our immunity, but look 
with tenderness and compassion upon those who suffer, as suffering 
with them. 

We pray that thy kingdom may come everywhere throughout 
the world ; may those hateful dissensions, may that arrogance, may 
that domineering pride, may that cruelty and grasping selfishness 
which have so long been legalized among nations in their intercourse 
with each other, pass away ; and may the truth of the Gospel, the love 
of Christ, the power of God among men, be seen in all the peoples of 
the earth. And may the glory of the Lord at last fill the whole world 
as the waters fill the sea. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. 
Amen. 



MAFS TWO NATURES 



•MAN'S TWO NATURES 



" But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of 
God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, 
because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judg- 
eth all things, yet he himself is judged of no mau." — 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15. 



After the arrogance with which in many ages the Church 
has distinguished itself — its pomp, its pride, its despotism ; 
after the intellectual assumption which has been shown in 
every age in theology — its enormous claims and its shortcom- 
ings in the matter of truth — it is natural that persons out 
out of the Church and out of what is ordinarily regarded as a 
religious life, should read words like these not only with dis- 
trust but with disgust. For, surely, interpreted in an outward 
way, and in the light of the history of an external church, 
they have something of arrogance. Especially the declara- 
tion that a Christian man (for men would in a general way 
suppose that the apostle means such) is a great deal shrewder, 
more capable of understanding, than a man who is not a 
Christian ; that he has gifts and graces of intelligence that do 
not belong to ordinary men ; and yet more, the climax appar- 
ently of conceit, the declaration that he judges everybody, 
but is himself exempt from examination or judgment, seems 
thus to put a man, because he thinks he is a Christian, over 
all his fellow-men, saying down to them, " I understand a 
great deal more than you do"; and, if they make any reply 
or raise any question, saying to them, " I understand you 
perfectly, but there is no one of you that can understand 
me" — this is the very quintessence of papacy in its -arro- 
gance, apparently; but it is only because it is interpreted 
in regard to the outward church and outward profession ; 

Sunday Morning, October 26, 1373. Lesson : Rom. vii. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nos. 907, 7S7, 908. 



128 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

for I think there is no truth more capable of being pre- 
sented to the willing reception of men than the real truth 
which lies enfolded in this statement. JSTot only is there no 
repugnance to the natural reason, or the experience of men 
in it, but it opens up in many respects a sphere or view of 
truth which is to be desired by all men. 

If, when we come to look at Paul's idea of mental philos- 
ophy, it shall be found to approach exceedingly near to the 
views that are being deduced from physiology in modern 
days, it will be among the many instances in which, by a 
kind of moral intuition, that apostle's mind discerned before- 
hand truths which science, for centuries lagging and indo- 
lent, has at length reached. For I hold that the views which 
are more and more obtaining in our day in respect to mental 
economy are substantially the views which are held by the 
apostle here. 

What, then, is his view of man ? What does he mean by 

the "natural man" and the "spiritual man"? 

"The natural man reeeiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: 
for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned." 

The same apostle held man to be made up substantially of 
two separate natures. Although we are not to give a strict 
scientific or philosophical interpretation to his words, press- 
ing them unduly ; although we are to make all allowance for 
the figurative way in which he expressed himself, yet the sum 
and substance of his teachings on the subject of psychology 
is that men are by nature born animals, born with physical 
endowment ; and that there is given to them, superinduced 
upon this, a higher capability or capacity. He takes the 
ground that by nature men tend to act simply in their lower 
natural bodily estate ; and that if they rise above this and 
come into their higher, or spiritual nature, it is in consequence 
of divine stimulation. That this is substantially his view I 
think must appear from the reading of the seventh of Eomans, 
which was made a part of our opening service, where he con- 
trasts the one and the other — the man within and the man 
without ; the man that is under the dominion of the flesh, 
and the man that is under the dominion of the Spirit. 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. il>9 

Now, he says that these two quarrel — the natural man, 
the physical man, the man who is an animal, endowed with 
defensory appetites and passions, and all the enginery for the 
maintenance of his existence in this outward world ; and the 
inward spiritual man. He says that the lower, fleshly man is 
too mighty for the higher, divine man. He says, " With the 
law of my mind I heartily approve the service of God ; but 
with the law of my flesh I seek other things. So then," he 
adds (as if in the enthusiasm of poetic reasoning he felt as- 
sured that the interior manhood was superior to the exterior) 
;< it is not I that do these things : I retreat into the citadel 
above. It is not I in my moral sentiments and in my sym- 
pathy wdth God : it is the animal growling and grumbling 
down below. It is that wdiich is not I after all, any more 
than the candlestick is the candle." 

This is not to be pressed to the extreme of scientific accu- 
racy ; but the substance of it is, that man is a twofold crea- 
ture, having those appetites and passions which are necessary 
to the sustenance of the body ; that these are mighty ; and 
that the higher moral and spiritual nature has a hard time in 
attempting to control the lower man. 

These same ideas are shown still more in contrast, and 
more pertinently, in the fifth chapter of Galatians. It is 
there made evident that in speaking of the natural man Paul 
means it, not in the sense that he has not passed through a 
spiritual change, but in the sense that he has also an animal 
nature. 

" This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the 
lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
Spirit against the flesh : and these are contrary, the one to the other ; 
so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." 

Here is reproduced in a little different form the argument 
of Romans : 

" But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now 
the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these : adultery, for- 
nication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, 
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, mur- 
ders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like." 

The marks of the natural man, then, are simply the marks 
of animal passions all the way through. Now he delineates 
the fruit of the other nature — the spirit-nature : 



1 30 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

" But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance : against such there is 
no law." 

Here, then, you have these two natures contrasted. It is 
plain that in the one case he means the body, with its different 
natural appetites and enginery, and that in the other case he 
means the intellect and moral sentiments. These constitute, 
in his philosophy, the two natures, or the double nature of 
man. 

Precisely that is in these later days shown to be true. 
Even if you were to take the extremest form in which mental 
philosophy has developed itself, without giving any adhesion 
to its hypotheses, it would not be found to vary much from 
Paul's theory. It is singular to see Mr. Darwin and Paul 
walking together in their ideas, as they certainly do — Paul 
saying that there are two men in man, the animal, and the 
spiritual superincumbent upon that ; and the school of Mr. 
Darwin saying that man was an animal, and has unfolded 
and risen up into a spiritual sort of manhood. The parallel- 
ism is remarkable. 

Now, Paul affirms, in relation to these two men in man, 
certain things. He is not speaking in regard to the con- 
verted class of men as opposed to the unconverted class ; he 
is not speaking of the Christian world in contrast with the 
non-Christian ; he certainly is not speaking of church people 
as distinguished from those who are not church people. He 
takes the abstract man, he takes some individual, he takes 
yourself, he takes anybody, and he says, " The under nature 
does not understand the upper nature ; it is not subject to it ; 
it cannot look up into it, nor understand it ; but the upper 
nature can look down into the lower. The inferior does not 
reach up to the superior, but the superior includes the infe- 
rior. And so, man acting as an animal does not under- 
stand man acting as a divine being ; but man acting as a 
divine being- does understand man acting as an animal. 

It is not, then, an affirmation that Christianity is a kind 
of secret society which, upon initiation, puts men in posses- 
sion of facts which do not belong to those who are outside of 
Christianity. There is no such thing as that. It is not an 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. 131 

esoteric doctrine. It certainly has no relation to ecclesias- 
tical matters. If any man has told yoa that if you join the 
Church you will understand in a minute things that you 
never dreamed of before, I say it is a lie. There is no truth 
in it. It is not meant that when a man becomes a Christian 
his state is so transformed that secrets are unlocked to him 
which are hidden from ordinary men. He may become more 
familiar with creeds and ceremonies and services ; but it is a 
truth a thousand times more profound, which is taught by 
the apostle. He is not referring at all to histories, doctrines, 
or policies of the Church which are hid from men of the world 
while they are understandable by men in the Church. In the 
first place, men in the Church itself cannot understand some of 
them, and never did, and never will. But if you take the 
historic facts of the Church in this world, one kind of man 
can understand them as well as another, if they both have the 
same intellectual capacity, and are equally diligeut in examin- 
ing them. There is nothing in a Christian man's mind which 
makes a fact seem different to him from what it does to an- 
other, provided it is a fact which is on the plane of both of 
them. An unbeliever, if he brings a candid mind to the inves- 
tigation of historical developments of Christianity, can under- 
stand them as well as a believer who also brings a candid mind 
to their investigation. There is no distinction between the 
capacity of the one and that of the other to understand such 
things. The polity of the Church is open to all men alike, with- 
out any regard to their religious states. The theological facte 
which have come down with Christianity are within the 
reach of all minds. A man can understand the doctrines of 
religion, strictly so called, whether he be a Christian or not. 
if anybody can understand them. The existence and agency 
of God, as mere philosophical matters, do not confine their 
light to those who have joined the Church, or have become 
spiritually minded. It is competent for unbelievers to under- 
stand such ideas as easily as any other class of men. A person 
can understand the doctrine of election whether he is elected 
or not. A man can understand the divinity of the Saviour so 
far as it is understandable by human intelligence, whether or 
not he believes it to be a fact — that is, he can understand it 



132 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

as a philosophical statement. His understanding depends 
not upon his moral condition, but upon his intellectual acute- 
ness and apprehensiveness. The doctrines of man's depravi- 
ty, of his regeneration, and of the efficacious spiritual influ- 
ence by which that regeneration is brought about, are not 
secret doctrines. When a man becomes a Christian he is not 
for the first time able to comprehend them. Men are assidu- 
ously taught in these doctrines before they go into the 
Church ; and after they go in they do not find that every im- 
portant truth is disclosed to them of which they were igno- 
rant before. 

It is not the intention of the apostle, therefore, to say 
that there are in the Church, or among associated Chris- 
tian men, certain secrets which are disclosed to them and not 
to others. It is not his intention to say that the doctrines 
and external developments of the Church are more difficult 
to be understood than the doctrines and developments of the 
world. It is not his intention to say that there is any trans- 
formation which makes a Christian man a better reasoner 
than a man who is not a Christian. The facts are not so. 
But the essential power of Christianity Paul everywhere de- 
clares to be in the spirit man. The primal conception of the 
ISew Testament on this subject is that the living soul, whose 
higher nature is developed, and who is under the influence of 
that higher nature, is itself the greatest moral force ; and a 
Church of such men becomes a most efficacious power in the 
world. For hundreds of years it was the only power ; be- 
cause there was no creed in the primitive Church, with the 
exception of the Apostles' creed, which is extremely simple. 
For hundreds of years, in the Church, the power by which 
the world was transformed was simply the power of the indi- 
vidual living or personal experience. 

Now, precisely this is taught by the apostle, time and 
again : that the power of the Gospel is Clirist i>i you, or the 
divine mind developing the higher nature, the moral senti- 
ments in you, putting plenary power into them by informing 
the whole life, fashioning the character, and bringing them 
out in many men in their living moral state. It is that power 
which the Church was to have had, and which one day per- 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. 133 

1 leaps it will have. The power of Christianity is the power of 
man trained after the pattern of Christ, inspired and inflamed 
!>y the Holy Ghost. The higher being, the new creature, 
created in righteousness by Christ Jesus — this is the sovereign 
notion of true spiritual power in the Church. This brings 
the statement within easy comprehension. In other words, 
when it is declared that the natural man understandeth not 
the things of the Spirit, it is not the statement of any nov- 
elty : it is the statement of a principle as broad as universal 
human experience. 

When a savage man looks with curious eye upon the 
whole complex civilization into which he is brought — a 
Piute, a Sioux, or an Appache, who has always dwelt in 
the woods — what do you suppose he thinks of as he travels 
over the plains and through the States to Washington ? Is 
not that which he sees a mighty maze, which is unintelligible 
to him? And is it arrogance for a man to say, "Well, the 
savage man cannot understand the civilized man"? He can 
understand him so far as his foot, or his knee, or his arm is 
concerned ; he can understand him so far as eating, and 
sleeping, and getting drunk, and being cruel are concerned ; 
these are things which are common to all men ; but there are 
other things in the civilized man which the savage cannot 
understand. The things in which a civilized man differs from 
a savage are higher and finer and nobler than those which I 
have just enumerated ; and as the savage has not had them 
developed in him, he cannot understand them. And the 
civilized man might say to the savage, "Well, well, my old 
swarthy friend, I can judge you, but I am not judged of you !" 
Is it not true ? and may it not be said without arrogance ? 

A man who is thoroughly educated to the physical forms of 
pleasure is absolutely unacquainted with men who are not so 
educated, but who are trained to the enjoyments of scholar- 
ship. Nay, more : it is very difficult, as you all know, for 
men to comprehend other men whose tastes differ from 
theirs in kind, whether higher or lower in grade. There 
are men whose life is in the domain of ideas. They are 
built so as to have very few physicr.l temptations. They 
may be said to be long in the head ; and most of the 



134 MA2T8 TWO NATURES. 

length is on the front side ; and they are straight down the 
back ; and they have a slender neck ; they have a slender 
chest, and a more slender stomach ; and they make but little 
blood — just enough to keep the machine going ; they never 
feel the impetus of destruction ; they never see blood in their 
imagination, as bullies do ; they are not quarrelsome ; they 
have no love of eating and drinking ; the passions are hardly 
known to them ; they dwell in the realm of taste ; they re- 
joice in ideas ; the whole world is populous to them, not of 
things but of relations ; they glory in scholarship ; and their 
idea of heaven, I take it, would be a vast hall full of books, 
with little nooks and corners for disputation, where men 
could get together and talk for hours, of subjects of no more 
importance than the question whether the tail of the comma 
ought to turn over this way, or over that way ! 

Take one of these men to a dance-house, and let him 
stand on the curb (that is near enough), and look into that 
hell-hole, and he would turn to the policeman that was with 
him, and say, " What are those creatures ? Who are they ? 
What are they doing ?" He has not the first idea of their 
loathsome amusement. He looks at them, and cannot under- 
stand them. He has not in himself that which they have in 
them, and which makes them what they are. 

Well, bring one of them out, and let him step up to this 
man, and slap him on- the shoulder, and say, " Old covey, 
come down and have a good time with us." He would 
rather have a snake touch him. He loathes this familiaritv, 
and cannot endure it. And the man of passions and appe- 
tites does not understand the man of mere brain-power, any 
more than the man of brain-power can understand the man 
of appetites and passions. They are foolishness to each other, 
because they cannot understand one another. The peculiari- 
ties of each can only be understood by an experience of 
them. 

Take another and more familiar example. Here is a man 
of facts. He is a good, honest, straightforward, moral man, 
and he has relations to things. He has powers of combina- 
tion. He would make a good mathematician, or engineer, 
or farmer, or miner. He looks at physical elements all the 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. 135 

time. He is brought in contact with an emotive man ; a 
man who is full of imagination ; a man who is poetical in 
his nature. In the case of one everything solidifies. He 
wants to feel, to see, to know, to measure, to test. Nothing 
is real to him which has not some bodily substance. In the 
case of the other everything exhales ; and nothing is real to 
him until it has exhaled, in the form of poetry, or imagina- 
tion, or something beautiful. There are two classes of men, 
one of whom are all the time running toward facts, and the 
other of whom are all the time vaporizing from facts to higher 
regions. They cannot understand each other. The men of 
facts ridicule theories. Oh how. they talk about beauty and 
imagination and poetry ! " These things are all moonshine," 
they will tell you confidentially. And men of theories look 
with contempt upon mere facts. One of these two classes lives 
in sensuousness, in the sphere of the lower reason. The 
other lives in idealit}^ in the realm of the higher reason 
and the moral sentiments ; and they do not enter into an 
understanding of each other. 

The man who, after reading Milton's Paradise Lost, said 
" Well, what does it prove ? " is a good illustration of a man. 
who lives in sense, and not in ideas, not in imagination, not 
in poetry, not in art, not in esthetics at all. 

How potent is this non-apprehension of one kind by an- 
other in every school ! One boy sits down, in the class-room, 
and, while his next companion is deep in his books, of his 
own accord, without instruction, he is deep making a carica- 
ture of the master. Drawing is natural to him. Pictures 
come out at the ends of his fingers as easily as sap comes out 
of a maple tree in spring. The other boy, seeing what he 
has done, smiles, and is pleased, and thinks he will try it — 
but only a few times ! He does not get along well ! And he 
looks with wonder upon his companion. They go out to play, 
and he says to him, " Sketch me that." And the boy makes 
a mark here, and another there, and another there, and out 
stands the object unmistakably. It is a complete picture, and 
there are not twenty strokes in it. The boy of books is amazed 
at the work of the boy of the pencil ; but not any more than 
the artist-boy is at the recitation of the expert scholar, when 



1 30 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

the master calls him up, and he stands at. the blackboard, 
and goes through a problem, the master stopping him with an 
imperative, "No, that is wrong;" and he saying, " Yes, it is 
right," and going on through, and demonstrating the correct- 
ness of his position. The artist-boy wishes he knew* what it 
all means, but he cannot see anything in it to draw or sketch. 
Each excels in his own sort of knowledge, but their minds 
move in different channels, and they cannot understand each 
other. 

A man cannot understand any mental process except so 
far as he has had experimental participation in it. For in- 
stance, I never think in music. Beethoven never thought 
out of it. Doubtless, when he looked upon life, the flight of 
birds, the movement of clouds, everything interpreted itself 
to him in the form of sounds. In almost any one of his sym- 
phonies a man can see the procession of life. His immortal 
Fifth Symphony is one of the most voluminous histories of 
psychological experience that was ever indited ; and when I 
am listening I have enough of sensibility to interpret a great 
deal of it ; but for me to have written it, or to have thought 
it out, would have been an absolute impossibility. If I at- 
tempt to whistle a new tune it is always made up of scraps of 
old ones, it is a hash( — and so I observe it is with most tune 
writers.) One can understand another only so far as he lives 
in the same faculties and in the same experiences. And 
while even the most spiritually-minded men generally have 
enough of the animal, in them to understand the lower or 
natural man, the converse is not true, and men who have not 
had their eyes spiritually opened cannot discern spiritual 
truth ; they have not experienced the spiritual life. 

Now, it is a philosophical fact that no man can under- 
stand the Christian experience of a soul except so far as he 
has had that experience, or an analogous one. Let us look 
at some elements which go to constitute a Christian experi- 
ence. Among the first experiences that a Christian has, is 
that of peace following struggle. In an overt form, or in a 
latent, gradually-developed form, to everyone who has at- 
tained a mastery over sin, over the flesh, over the natural 
man, there is given a seeking, a yearning, a longing for 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. 137 

something better, a sense of condemnation, and the resistance 
of pride and selfishness ; and there follows a struggle in the 
soul. With some it is vehement, and it is mild with others ; 
but to a greater or less extent it takes place in all. As in the 
case of the prophet of old, after the earthquake, the whirl- 
wind, and the fire, God came in the still small voice ; so 
there comes into the soul of every man who has succeeded in 
self-renunciation, and who is able to say in his innermost 
being, to God, to the Lord Jesus Christ, "I yield ; thy will 
be done," — there comes into the soul of every such man a 
light, a hope, a faith, which is full of possibilities for the 
future. 

Early in life, at the age of four or five years, or there- 
abouts, every child comes into collision with its parents ; and 
unless there is great care there will be a conflict of jurisdic- 
tion. In some unthought-of moment the child is told to do 
something, and it says, U I won't"; and the parent repeats 
the command, and commits himself ; and the child and the 
parent come into collision ; and if the parent yields, that is 
the end of government there, in all probability ; but if the 
parent insists, the child resists, and it is punished ; and it 
resists, and it is punished ; and it resists, and it is punished ; 
and then it falls back on the fox instinct, and does many 
amiable things : it does this, and that, and everything but 
the -thing where the issue was made ; and by-and-by disci- 
pline presses, firm, quiet, steady, intense, till the moment 
comes when the child has to give up on that point ; and in 
giving up on that point it gives up all over and all through ; 
and it bursts into a flood of tears, and runs to the parent's 
arms. Oh, if I recollect aright, there are no sweeter mo- 
ment in life than the moment when the struggle gives way, 
and the child runs to the father's or the mother's arms ! The 
sense of yielding one's self to that which is right, and to that 
which is superior ; the sense of giving up one's lower nature, 
and mingling in the higher nature of a parent — that is pleas- 
ant, even in the minor experience of a child in the house- 
hold. But when persons have grown older, and the conflict 
is not with an earthly parent, but with the Eepresentation, 
in their imagination, of justice, of truth, of love, and of 



138 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

mercy ; when it is with the infinite Benefactor of the 
universe, and the man's soul is consciously in opposition to 
him, not in respect to this, that, or the other law, but in re- 
spect to something which is in the man's own self, God say- 
ing, " Wilt thou have me to rule over thee ?" and the soul 
saying, by its pride, "No," by its selfishness, "No," by its 
vanity, "No," and by its appetites, "No" ; and when the 
struggle has gone on until in some happy moment the balance 
is struck aright, and the soul is able to say, " Not my will, but 
thine be done," — then the experience is blessed. In all the 
world is there such an hour of deep tranquility, is there such 
an hour of peace which passeth all understanding, as that 
which comes to a man when he feels in his higher nature — in 
his moral consciousness, in his whole spiritual instinct, — 
that he has yielded himself to God, and that he is the Lord's ? 

Now, who can enter into this experience that has never 
had it ? Who can understand it who has never felt it ? Al- 
most any man can understand the Catechism, the Confession 
of Faith, and much of the historical parts of the Bible, and 
a great deal of theological lore ; but this is a point of tre- 
mendous importance ; it is transcendent above all other ques- 
tions in moral magnitude — that the natural man, the man 
who is living in his lower nature, cannot understand the 
things of the Spirit. It is only when he has come into, the 
full development of his higher nature that a man can under- 
stand spiritual things. 

Consider those hours in which the vision of God is given 
to men. It is true that in the divine economy of this life we 
are not to live on the top of the Mount of Transfiguration, 
where Peter and James and John desired to live. It is not 
possible that we should. It is very rarely that any one lives 
in a continuous vision of God. But there are hours when all 
of those who have really felt the touch of the divine Spirit, 
and who have really in their ruling will gone over, through 
their spiritual elements, to the divine control, have an emi- 
nent vision of God. It fills the heaven. It floods the earth. 
It bewilders them with strange joy. One of its tokens is the 
totally different measurements which they give to things. To 
them property is no longer what it was ; pleasure is no longer 



MAN'S TWO NATURES. 139 

what it was. Height, depth, length, breadth, quality, 
quantity, value, everything seems changed ; and under the 
illumination of the conscious presence of God, in the rap- 
ture of the thought of God with one, and loving one, 
and looking upon one with tender compassion — the sense of 
this transcends all other experiences. And how shall I ex- 
plain it so that you shall understand it if you never had it ? 

Take an infinitely lower case than this. Take the de- 
velopment of a child that has been carried away from home, 
early in life, and that has such a thoroughbred nature 
that all its gipsy attendants could not pervert it. For six, 
seven, eight years or more, it has gone through camp after 
camp, and has not been contaminated, or has been contami- 
nated only externally and superficially. At last, through 
some strange evolution, when it is ten years old, the child is 
brought again to its native village, and is rescued, and treated 
kindly, and inquiry is made for its parents ; and finally the 
father and mother are discovered. Most noble natures are 
they. The child is now sent home ; and quick with sensibil- 
ity, and with an imagination that in all its wanderings has 
been feeling after true parentage, its heart has never known 
what it was to be loved disinterestedly. It has been yearning 
for sweetness and affection, but has never found them ; till 
at last, going home, it is received by a saintly woman who is 
its mother ; and then it experiences the outpouring of disin- 
terested love ; and there is enacted the grand and glorious 
scene of one soul, unfolded, unfolding another soul. Can 
you conceive, to some extent, what would be the experience 
of such a child, lost and brought home ? And yet, to those 
who are competent to be raised to the sense of being brought 
back to God, and to. the bosom of his love, the vision is 
transcend ently better than that. Do not scoff at it in others ' 
because you do not have it yourself. For there are thousands 
who have it; and it is increasing; and it will increase for ages 
to come, I believe. And how shall the natural man under- 
stand it ? It is not because he lacks intellectual reasoning 
power that he cannot understand it, but because it is a truth 
of such a nature that no man can realize it except by feel- 
ing it. No reasoning can make a generous man understand 



140 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

what is meant by covetousness. I do not think it is in the 
power of man to make me feel pleasure in hoarding money ; 
nor you, nor you ; but there are men that I am afraid no 
power on earth can make understand what is the pleasure of 
giving money away. The stingy man cannot understand 
benevolence, and the benevolent man cannot comprehend 
hunkishness and miserliness. These are things which may 
be perceived, but which to be understood must be felt. 

I have some idea of what it would be to have cautery per- 
formed, because I have burned my hand before now ; but my 
knowledge on the subject is very imperfect. Suppose you 
were to see the white iron, sparkling, moving slowly down the 
whole length of a man's arm, w r ould you say, " I understand 
it because I undertook to snuff out a candle once, and some of 
the wick stuck to my finger, and burned it " ? Would that 
be an interpretation of such an experience ? 

In short, the world is recognizing the fact that there is a 
large class of truths (truths of matter, external facts) which 
belong to the outward understanding and which one man may 
understand as well as another. And the world is recognizing 
another fact — namely, that within every man is a realm of im- 
agination, of love, of faith and of hope, where the royalty of 
disposition dwells; and that they who feel these things under- 
stand them, while those who do not feel them do not and 
cannot understand them. 

Let us read, now, again, in the light of these illustrations, 

the words of the apostle : 

" The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." 
It is not unconverted men as a class that are here spoken 

of, but the ideal, universal man. 

"The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit, for they 
are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them, because they 
are spiritually discerned." 

They are to be discerned by an operation and an experi- 
ence of the spiritual faculties which he has not had. 

"But he that is spiritual judgeth all things." 

That must be taken with discretion. AM things must be 
interpreted to mean all things through which a man has 
passed in a long line of development. What a man has not 
known personally or experimentally lie cannot understand. 



MAlSrx TWO NA TTTRES. 1 4 1 

" He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of 
no man." 

He knows what pride is — lie lias felt it ; lie knows what 
selfishness is — he has felt it ; he knows what it is to be under 
the dominion of carnal appetites, having felt it; and he has a 
tender sympathy for all men who are under their dominion. 
He has been in the gall of bitterness, and in the bonds of in- 
iquity himself; but having risen into the altitude of joy, and 
of that peace which passeth all understanding, he can be 
judged of no man who has not also risen into that altitude. 
jMo man can understand these things from below ; but when 
men have gone up to where they are, lie can understand them. 

If these views be correct, there are a few applications that 
may be pertinent. 

First, a sweet and Christlike nature goes deeper into moral 
relations and truths than it is possible- for a man of mere cult- 
ure or mere thought-power to go. I state this, not so much 
as a general proposition as to point out some facts which are 
recognized by all who have much to do with the Christianiz- 
ation of the lower classes of society. We often find a poor 
and ignorant man or woman in this world who is a better 
teacher of spiritual things than the ripest and richest scholar. 
I have known, in my own history, several whom I revered as 
my spiritual superiors, while they were far inferior to me in 
acquired knowledge, and even in intellectual force. The 
deep things of the Spirit they had grown familiar with. Their 
souls had entered into the Spirit of God, and they had so 
abandoned themselves to the divine indwelling, that their 
sense of spiritual truths, their soul-experience, was vastly 
greater than mine. Their judgments were almost unerring. 

One of the wisest women that I ever saw in my life was 
an old negress who came North for the redemption of one or 
two of her daughters ; and this congregation had a hand in 
their emancipation. The manifestation of tenderness and 
the absence of wrath in her case were extraordinary. She 
had a strong nature ; she was capable of feeling all that any 
soul could ; and yet her patience and forgiveness toward 
those who were her oppressors, her pity for them, and her 
humility, were remarkable. Her refusal to be carried away 



142 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

in bitterness, or to speak severely of the system under which 
she was brought up, was sublime. She showed herself to be 
transcendently superior to most of us in these respects. The 
spirit which she exhibited was a revelation to many. I re- 
member the profound admiration with which I looked upon 
her, and saw the deeper life than that of mere superficial ex- 
perience which she was living. 

Here was this slave woman, with comparatively no knowl- 
edge. A little light had found its way into her soul. She 
had come under the influence of the Spirit of God in Christ 
Jesus, and it controlled her. Her eight or ten children were 
one by one taken from her and sold ; and yet she was with- 
out bitterness, without wrath, without revenge toward those 
who had wronged her. Nay, she had the profoundest yearn- 
ing toward them. She stood as a trunk with branch after 
branch torn off ; but the topmost boughs were bright with 
blossoms, and the light of heaven rested on them. 

It is not what we know by the outward understanding 
that fits us for instructing men in matters pertaining to the 
Spirit. It is the glory of God that sweetens that chamber of 
the soul which has the deepest spiritual elements in it, and 
which makes men powerful in dealing with their fellow-men 
to elevate them. 

"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is 
among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to 
think ; hut to think soberly, according as God. has dealt to every tnan 
the measure of faith." 

Men may be in external elements masters of Christian 
history and of Christian theory, and yet be ignorant of es- 
sential Christian life. They may be competent to teach in 
many external things, but not competent to teach that which 
is the deepest and the best. And so God makes the last to 
be first. The despised things of this world he makes to be 
honorable, and the weak things he makes to be strong, in the 
inward and most beautiful sense. 

The assaults which are being made upon Christianity 
in .our day make it necessary that all those who believe 
profoundly in Christ, in God, and in the Christian scheme, 
should enter into the spirit of true religion, and not allow 



MAW'S TWO NATURES. 1 48 

themselves to put their faith in religion upon any historical 
grounds — though there are historical grounds which are 
important. Beligion should not be made to rest on mere 
ratiocination. There ought to be in the church such a spirit- 
ual knowledge of God, such an innermost communion with 
invisible things, such a development of the spirit of man, 
that he should see God, and be able to say, "I know, I know! " 

Drifting forever, like fishermen on the banks of New- 
foundland, who have lost their reckonings, and are obliged 
to find their way by the blowing of horns and the ringing of 
bells, is greatly to be deplored ; yet how many thousands 
there are in the chilling mists of skepticism to-day ! and they 
are to be brought out, if they are brought at all, not by the 
power of external reasoning or historic asseveration, but by 
the development in men of the power of Christ Jesus. 

You may take a bronze statue, and set it up in the market- 
place, and if it has a disproportioned nose, and hideous ears, 
and ungainly limbs, you may get all the artists in the world 
to praise it, and to declare that it is natural and beautiful, 
but men will not believe it. Some from indolence, or from 
some other motive, may say, "Yes, yes, I see it ;" but they 
will not see it — they cannot. On the other hand you may 
set a whole school of artists and critics to reviling a statue* as 
being infamous and outrageous ; and yet, when you come to 
remove the raiment, if it is intrinsically beautiful, in spite of 
all that can be said against it it will stand and shine, and 
men, whether they want to or not, will have to confess that it 
is beautiful. Beauty is its own argument, its own evidence. 

Now, there is nothing so beautiful as the graces of the 
soul. There is nothing like meekness and gentleness and 
sweetness. Shut up half a dozen sharp, acidulous, skeptical, 
cynical patients in a hospital with two or three Sisters of Char- 
ity. These ministering angels are kind to them in all their 
frets ; they are patient with all their unreasonableness, they 
are gentle under all their insults, feeling superior to them, 
and not caring for them ; they watch them through delirious 
hours ; they serve them during their convalescence ; and they 
are conscious all the time that there is inside of them a hid- 
den man that has never yet come to development. They have 



144 MAN'S TWO NATUBES. 

been dealing with them in their animal nature, but they are 
continually knocking at the door of the soul, and saying to 
that inner man that has never been awakened, " Wake up ! " 
And I tell you, great is the power of Christian faith and 
Christian kindness in bringing out the divinity that is in the 
souls of men. "What we need more than anything else is the 
power of long-suffering ; the power of being injured, and yet 
being like God ; the power of loving, though you be not 
loved ; the power of looking on men with compassion, ac- 
cording to your measure (and a small measure it is), as Christ 
looked upon those who were around about him ; the power of 
the inward spiritual man, acting in all the relations of the 
household, and in the whole sphere of life. 

Oh ! if I could call together with a trumpet such an army 
as I would like, it should be made up of men clad with the 
13th chapter of 1st Corinthians ; and I would march through 
the earth with these soldiers, with that panoply on them, and 
they would be irresistible. 

Christian influence is not external administration, and it 
is not mental excogitation. These are well; but power in the 
soul is that which makes it like God. It is the intrinsic 
beauty of that manhood which is like Christ Jesus. And that 
is the hope of the world. 

When I call men to a Christian life, I am met, a thousand 
times, by objections to which I think the foregoing consider- 
ations furnish a fair answer. One man says, " I could not 
conduct my business if I were to become a Christian, and 
were to live a Christian life." You do not know anything 
about it. Another man says, "I have a violent temper, I 
have a nature that has never been trained; and if I were to 
go into the Church I could not restrain it; and I should 
bring disgrace on religion." Very likely you would, if you 
came in from mere external motives ; but if you entered 
under the influence of the Spirit of God in your soul, you do 
not know what that influence would do for you, and you 
never can know, till you try it. Another man says, f I 
never could give this up, and I never could give that up." 
You never could appropriate all the blessings that would 
come flocking to you. Only once let a soul enter the Chris- 



MJJPS TWO NATURES. 145 

tian life with conscious fidelity to the truth, in the sublimest 
act of consecration to Christ Jesus, realizing him to be the 
Lord of the universe, — and all things belong to that soul, and 
he knows it and feels it. The New Testament says, in lan- 
guage transcending anything which man can say : 

" Therefore let no man glory in men ; for all things are yours, 
whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, 
or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are 
Christ's; and Christ is God's." 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON". 

We draw near to thee, our heavenly Father, rejoicing in thy 
strength, in thy wisdom, in thy knowledge of all our affairs, and in 
that divine sympathy which makes thee our Fatner, as thou hast 
taught us to call thee. We rejoice in thee more than in ourselves ; 
for our sufficiency is of thy great power. All that is good in us must 
needs he lifted up hy thy quickening. That which is evil, or works 
toward it, we find drawing us down habitually to the earth. We are 
tempted to be earthly. We need thine inspiration and thy Spirit that 
they may become ours, that we may thrive in them, and that they 
may take possession of us, and become the strength of our whole 
nature, and rule in us and over us. We rejoice, since thou art the 
Fountain of all virtue and grace, that thou hast manifested thyself 
to us in Jesus Christ our Lord, and revealed the plenitude of thy 
patience and mercy and benevolent love. We rejoice in his example. 
We rejoice in the words which he spoke. We rejoice, most of all, 
that he transfigured to us the thought of God as one no longer cold 
and far away, and holding in his hand all the lines of fate, but full of 
blessedness and warmth and desire and yearning toward those be- 
neath him. Thou art, out of thine own soul, carrying our souls. 
Thou art mingling in us those divine elements which shall yet be per- 
fected. When they are perfected, we shall be born into the life and 
into the estate of sons of God. And blessed is the work by which we 
attempt, either in ourselves or in others, to develop the divine 
nature; for thou hast promised that by sorrows, by joys, by thy whole 
discipline, we shall be partakers of thy divine nature— not of thy 
power, nor of the outreach of thy wisdom, but of thy beneficence, 
and of the glory and beauty which are in thy divine nature. We 
shall yet be like thee, not in stature but in kind. 

And now we bring to thee, our Father, the wants of this great 
congregation. Though close shut up to every other one, and to them- 
selves, they are open before thee like the pages of a book; and thou 
knowest where is gladness, where is sorrow, where is care, where is 
fear, where is perplexity, where is remorse, where are bereavements, 



146 MAN'S TWO NATURES. 

and where is real heart-sickness. Thou knowest the whole lore of 
human life. Thou knowest who have come hither from curiosity, and 
who from soul-hunger. Thou knowest the weary ones, who have 
come hoping that the bread and the water of life may give them 
strength to hear their lot. Thou knowest those to whom everything 
looks gloomy and dark. Thou knowest those whose burdens are not 
yet light according to thy promise. O Lord our God, look with com- 
passion upon the great needy multitude that throng with their 
thoughts around about thee to-day. What is there in the great battle 
of life that any one needs, with which thou art not willing to equip 
him? O that every one might come as to a fountain that flows on 
forever, inexhaustible ! O that every one might know the secret by 
which he might take from God strength and patience and fortitude 
to bear necessary evil, and uncomplaining serenity in the midst of 
trials ! O that every one might borrow from thee the raiment that he 
needs, the armor that he needs, and the inspiration that he needs, so 
that as his day is his strength may be also. However much outward 
things may vary and waver, and whatever assaults and storms may 
come, may there be to every one of us a hidden pavilion, a refuge of 
sacred thoughts in the bosom of our God. May we feel sure that thou 
art, and that thou art the Rewarder of those who diligently seek thee. 

We pray that thou wilt grant that we may not be unmindful of 
those who are around about us. Make us wise to teach the ignorant, 
and to gather in the untrained. Give us wisdom to spread abroad the 
Spirit of meekness and gentleness and forbearance and self-sacrifice. 
Grant that the truth may go out from us, not alone by the words of 
our lips, but by our unconscious influence. 

Bless this nation. Bless the President of these United States, and 
those who are in authority with him. Be pleased to bless the gover- 
nors and the magistrates throughout our whole land. Bless our entire 
citizenship. Grant that our people may abide purely and truly under 
just laws wisely administered. 

And why should we pause here? Art not thou the God of those 
who are beyond the flood ? Are not they thine who are of a different 
tongue ? We pray that men may recognize their relationship to thee, 
and their brotherhood with each other. We pray that all wars and all 
cruelties which have filled the earth may cease. When, O God, shall 
the winepress no longer be trod with fierce feet? When shall the time 
of the flowing of blood cease? When shall all groans which have 
filled the air as one vast requiem moving to the motion of the globe 
come to an end? When will that day arrive on which the bright 
herald shall come blowing the joyful tidings from his trumpet, that 
the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ, and that he is reigning, and shall reign? 
Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly; for the whole earth doth wait for 
thee. 

* And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. 
Amen. 



ALL-SIDEMESS IN CHRISTIAN 

LIFE. 



ALL-SIDEMESS IN CHBISTM 

LIFE. 



" Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may 
be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." — 
Epty. vi. 13. 



This phrase is repeated. It occurs in the 11th verse, and 

again in the 13th. 

" Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand 
against the wiles of the devil." "Put on the whole armor of God, 
that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day." 

By nature Paul was a general. He had all those sympa- 
thetic and magnetic qualities which tended powerfully to 
influence men. He had the sense, as it may be said, of man- 
kind. He knew their feelings. He knew how to approach 
them. He had an intense nature. He was full of allowable 
ingenuity and strategy in the art • of thinking. His figures 
are not meditative. They are almost never drawn from the 
quiet aspects of nature. There is very little of simple sweet- 
ness and simple beauty in them. The idea of beauty seems 
hardly to have entered into his mind. It is inconceivable 
that a man should have gone to Athens in the day of its glory, 
and seen that which one might almost give a life to see, and 
should have left no word about it. No statue glitters in his 
reminiscences. Of no temple did he give any description. 
The gorgeousness and glory of Grecian painting and Grecian 
art at large seem to have left upon his mind almost no 
trace. Nor do we find anywhere a sense of the beautiful in 
his mind and thought. But wherever men strove to the ut- 
termost, there he saw something. His whole soul was filled 

Sunday Morning, November 2, 1873. Lesson : Matt. ill. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nos. 666, 655, 657. 



150 ALL-13IDEDNES8 IN CHRISTIAN LIFE\ 

with the thought of men — men developed to energy. What- 
ever there was brought forth anywhere of skill and zeal and 
endeavor furnished him themes for contemplation. Men prac- 
ticing athletic games, men at work, soldiers in armies — these 
provided him with illustrations. Though some of his figures 
are drawn from the household, some from civil life, and some 
from governments, they are all astir. They march. They 
move. It could not have been otherwise. 

The best pointed arrow may go leisurely flying through 
the air from a weak bow; but even a poor arrow whizzes 
from a bow of steel ; and whatever the figures were, wljen 
Paul let them fly, they went ! Here he brings up before the 
mind the equipment of an old Eoman soldier, covered with 
iron from head to foot, waiting for attack, and withstanding 
to the uttermost. 

Now, Christ came to put an end to war; he was the 
Prince of peace and good-will toward men ; and it is strange 
enough that a warlike figure should have been chosen to 
designate the life of a follower of Christ ; yet, there was no 
unfitness in it. The spiritual conflicts of men, or their en- 
deavors to live aright — evading, resisting, overcoming, sub- 
duing utterly, or annihilating spiritual enemies — these are a 
part of the great warfare in life ; and so the illustration is 
not an unfit one. It implies the all-surrounding dangers that 
beset a Christian man, and the need of most ample and thor- 
ough preparation on the part of every Christian for the life- 
conflict. 

According to the apostle's view, every one who would rise 
into a full Christian state of mind, and abide in it, must put 
forth efforts to that end. We cannot inherit religion. We 
may inherit more or less a moral constitution ; we may in- 
herit aptitudes in the direction of religious thought and re- 
ligious emotion ; but character was never born, nor does it 
ever come by accident. Character is built up from the very 
foundation. It is but another name for consecutive habits ; 
and habits are the results to which men come by successive 
and continuous operations of their own will. Nothing, more 
than a high religious character, demands that men should 
put forth the utmost exertions, aud exertions long continued. 



ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 151 

The adversaries which the apostle mentions here are wor- 
thy of our regard for a moment : 

" We wrestle not against flesh and bloGd." 

That is, we do not wrestle against them principally. "We 
are not to take our measure from them. We wrestle against 
governments, against the rulers of the world, against powers, 
whatever they may be, and wherever they may be. 

"We wrestle against the rulers of the darkness of this world, 
against spiritual wickedness iu high places. Wherefore take unto 
you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the 
evil day." 

There is something in this very obscurity ; there is some- 
thing in this very amplitude of description of dangers above, 
dangers below, dangers on every side, dangers from common 
men, dangers from magistrates, dangers from governments, 
dangers from occupations, dangers from within and from 
without, dangers everywhere and always, dangers that en- 
viron us in every way, dangers proceeding from all sorts of 
temptation — there is something in these things which would 
seem to make it necessary for us to arm ourselves, and to 
never cease watching and fortifying ourselves against the 
multitudes of evils which surround us. We are nowhere and 
at no time free from liabilities to temptation and downfall. 

The customs and usages of life in business or pleasure all 
tend powerfully to educate, not the highest nature but the 
lowest feelings, as they are conducted by men. For though 
I do aver that the course of nature and the normal operations 
of society are moral educators, and were designed to be such, 
and have inherent tendencies which are constantly striving to 
produce in men a moral basis and a moral character; yet, 
these natural schools where men are educated to higher and 
truer manliness are constantly perverted. They are under 
influences which tend to make them false educators ; so that 
this world, which should .each men industry, and frugality, 
and foresight, and sympathy man with man, and kindness, 
and punctuality, and truth, and honor, and fairness, is teach- 
ing them these things in a measure ; but, after all, it teaches 
them pride, and inordinate self-reliance, and vanity, and ava- 
rice, and selfishness, and brutal combativeness. It fills them 
with all manner of unregulated passions and appetites. 



152 ALL-JSIDJSDNESJS m CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

But you cannot avoid this. If you go out of the world 
to get rid of the temptations which spring from without, 
you fall upon temptations that spring from within. For no 
man is in such fatal danger as the man who is lazy, and 
who is with himself alone or mainly. There are no tempta- 
tions which work such mean fermentations as those which 
spring upon men who live solitary lives. Though outward 
associations, by turning a man unduly one way or another, 
may impair the moral tone of his character to a certain ex- 
tent ; yet they carry with them a sanitary influence, many of 
them ; and a man who has broken away from his fellows, and 
retired from life ; a man who feels at liberty to go out from 
the great battle of manhood, and sequester himself, and 
dwell in his own sweet meditations, and live for his own per- 
fection; one who avoids burdens, and yokes, and conflicts, 
and dangers — such a man is the meanest of men. There is 
in him a lack of pluck, a lack of stamina, a lack of moral 
enterprise, a lack of generosity, a lack of large benevolence, 
which is indispensable to manhood. 

So, then, you cannot go out of life if you would. You 
meet the grim devil of selfishness, you meet the minor evils 
of life more in solitude than anywhere else. In life you 
meet all the fiery seductions which come from one spirit or 
another of the passions and appetites which are inflamed 
among men, the strong biasing the weak, and those of inor- 
dinate means sweeping away those who have little or no 
means, and the wise domineering over the simple. If you go 
into the Church, it has its dangers and temptations. If you 
go into the Exchange, it has its own liabilities and perils. If 
you go into the street, you find dangers there. In the wilder- 
ness, on the highway, upon the sea, in foreign lands, at home, 
doing the work of morality, performing the necessary econom- 
ic duties of human life, in high positions and in low, every- 
where, men are surrounded by temptations, by evils ; and no 
man can avoid them or evade them. He cannot shut himself 
out from them. 

When summer comes, and I leave my house, I shut it 
tight. Every window is closed, the blinds are fastened, and 
the curtains are rolled down. Now the house is clean, and 



ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 153 

clean it shall be. But through the window, in spite of the 
shutter and in spite of the curtain, the dust slips in ; and 
when I return I could write my name on every bureau and on 
every drawer in every apartment. There is no solitariness in 
a house such that dirt cannot find it. And men may shut 
themselves out from life, and think that they have between 
them and the various temptations to which they are liable 
such impediments that they cannot be reached ; but they are 
mistaken. In your quiet home, in the solitary places to 
which you resort, temptations still come where you are ; 
and no man is let alone, through much tribulation are 
we destined to go forward in life. No matter what your 
circumstances are, your journey upward is a journey step by 
step through all manner of difficult ways. Life is a battle, 
and it is to be fought from first to last. There are some 
pauses to be sure, there is a space here and there, where paeans 
are lifted up, and victories are celebrated, and chants are 
sung of hopes that lie in the horizon of the future ; but 
nevertheless, continuously, and in every part of the soul — in 
the intellect, in the moral sentiments, in the social affections, 
and in the basilar forces, the passions and appetites which 
are most needful in their place as a means of impelling men 
forward in the strife — man is being tried, pushed and beaten 
down. He is intensified where he should be moderate ; he is 
dried up in things which should flow ; he is fiery where 
he should be cool, and cool where he should be fiery. 
So when a man attempts to carry himself, with his complex 
parts, in symmetry and harmony, he is perpetually thrown 
out of concord and unison. 

On every side temptations beset men. Nor is there any 
possibility of their getting rid of them. They are to be met, 
and they are to be overcome, so that at last we may get 
through safely. 

Nor is it enough that men should have intensity of desire. 
It is necessary from the nature of the conflict through which 
we are passing that there should be continuity of feeling and 
of effort. 

Oh, if we could do by character what we can by money, 
how splendid it would be ! A fortunate speculation will 



154 ALL-SIDEDNES8 IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

sometimes sweep into a man's coffers all that lie needs ; and 
if men only knew only one single word, how happy they 
would be to-day ! That word is enough. Why, there have 
been thousands of men who have had enough, if they had 
only known how to be contented with it ; but no, they 
had the gambler's greed, and the earnings of to-day were 
put at stake to-morrow ; and then, inflamed with hope, 
they began again. Men are eager for a little, that it may 
be yeast to raise more ; and they are desirous that that more 
shall have many children, and that those many children 
shall have many again ; and so the thoughts and desires of 
men in regard to wealth multiply and multiply. Like circles, 
which when made on the tranquil surface of the water run 
far out of sight, so are the thoughts and desires of men. 
Thousands have gathered in enough — that is to say, enough 
to feed them, to clothe them, to bring all instruments of cult- 
ure about them, to advance their children in education, and 
to put them forward in life sufficiently to enable them to 
achieve their own way. 

(And here let me say that the child that is lugged through 
life on the back of his parent is no better than an Indian 
papoose. He is nothing but an everlasting baby. And no 
persons go though life well except those who have learned to 
stand on their own feet, and to achieve their own success.) 

But as I was saying, thousands of men have had money 
enough to support themselves and their families, and to give 
their children an education, and to set them up in life ; and 
some are happy enough to know it,, and while continuing 
active in good works do not toil in the acquisition of money. 
But we cannot do by character what we can by money. I may 
buy me a farm, and stock it, and build a house and a barn on 
it, and can live contentedly ; and I may feel that I have 
enough of this world's goods ; but no man can say this of 
character, or disposition, or knowledge. No man has enough 
of these. Born as sparks, we are to kindle to a flame ; and the 
flame is to go on enlarging and enlarging till it shines unto 
the perfect day. We are brought into this world by the 
smallest, at the least, and in the lowest, and we are to rise by 
its disciplines to the highest — to a stature which no man can 



A LL-JSIDEDNUtiS m CHRISTIAN LIFE. 155 

measure, and of which no man can have any conception. 
And this is a work which requires incessant building. 

Mark the growth of a stately edifice such as that which is 
going up now in New York under government auspices. 
How long the walls have been rising ! How long the mate- 
rials have been accumulating ! But the work must go on, or 
that which has been done will be lost. The building as it 
stands is of no account. The storms can now come into it 
from above, and on every side. The structure must be com- 
pleted if it is to serve the purposes for which it was designed. 

Men are building their characters. Some are laying the 
foundations, and some are carrying up the side walls ; but no 
man can stop. As long as the elements of this world beat 
upon him he must go on ; and it is not until he is roofed in, it 
is not until he is in the mansions above, that the continuous 
strife will cease which goes to make his perfected manhood. 

Men who go up on inclined planes are pulled back inces- 
santly by the attraction of gravitation ; and unless they put 
forth effort incessantly they slide down again. So we that 
are on the upward road from the animal toward the angelic 
are pulled back incessantly by the gravitation that tends to 
draw men down to the lower condition of life. Every en- 
deavor to go upward is attended with work. Men who carry 
burdens up hill must exert themselves till they get to the 
very top ; and so we, through life, must exert ourselves in- 
cessantly to the very last. 

" Put on the whole armor of God." 

If one omits a single part of his armor, lie leaves a port 
open for death to enter. If the part is exposed where the hel- 
met should be, the stroke may light there, though the man be 
protected everywhere else. And what boots it that his head 
is protected if he leaves his corselet off, so that the spear or 
the arrow may pierce him through the heart ? If one part of 
the armor is left off all the rest is useless. The whole must 
be put on. 

When the careful householder retires to bed, he locks the 
front door, he fastens the front windows, the rear windows 
and the kitchen windows ; and all that he neglects is the 
front basement door. That he forgets to lock. He might as 



156 ALL-SIDEDNESS W CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

well have left the whole house open ; for to lock every door 
but one is to leave all unlocked, to all intents and purposes. 

What if, when the wind rages, you shut every window but 
one ; will not the wind find you as certainly as though you 
left all the windows open ? 

When the winter sets in, and you would protect your 
flowers, it is needful to protect them on the north, on the 
south, on the east, and on the west. Any amount of protec- 
tion, if you leave one side open, is invalid and worthless, and 
the smiting frosts shall come in. 

So the lack of a single quality in a man destroys the 
value of all the qualities which he has. A man may have the 
noblest intuitions, he may form the noblest purposes, and he 
may engage with the utmost enthusiasm in right courses, but 
if he lack the single quality of patience, the want of that 
undoes the whole. One might knit and knit and knit, 
through the live-long day, but if at night a child ravels and 
ravels and ravels all that was done during the day, it is rendered 
completely void. Men may by the mere want of persever- 
ance bring to. naught the noblest things after the noblest 
endeavors ; and so they do, largely. 

Our moral experiences are flashes. Would that they were 
such flashes as light-houses give, which revolve at times 
with diminished and extinguished light, only the more to 
make emphasis with the renewed gleam on the eye of him 
who, afar off at sea, is reading the signs and tokens of the 
shore. Men do not intermit their experiences in this way. 
They let the fire go out. 

The housewife puts her tea-kettle on — for tea must be 
made. Shavings are heaped up under the kettle, and are 
lighted. Soon they are all in a blaze ; and for a moment the 
water begins to simmer ; but presently the fire goes out ; 
and she, going out too, forgets her tea; and when she 
speedily comes back, it is as if there had been no fire. 
So there is no tea, and there is no meal. How often do we, 
in like manner, kindle a momentary zeal ! How often do 
we inspire intense enthusiastic feelings that quickly run their 
course, and turn to ashes, and destroy our purposes, and turn 
our feet aside from the true path I 



ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 157 

Now, the continued action and the comprehensive unity 
of all the graces of the soul are indispensable to the building 
up of a right character, and the attainment of an inward and 
Christian manhood. There are many Christians who set 
themselves to the acquisition of single excellences, to the 
neglect, and almost to the ignoring of others. One man is 
negative. He is very careful not to do an}i;hing that is 
wrong — and this is right. He watches his thoughts, his feel- 
ings and his every-day actions, to keep them from going 
wrong ; and he seems to think that when thus he has put a 
bridle on his lips, when he has shut off all wrong, he has 
made great attainment. 

Surely, it is a great deal to avoid wrong-doing ; but what 
would you account that husbandry to be worth which suc- 
ceeded only in keeping down weeds ? A man goes on plow- 
ing and plowing, harrowing and harrowing, hoeing and hoe- 
ing ; and he rejoices, as July comes on, saying, " There is 
not a weed on my farm — not a tveed." Eound and round 
he goes, looking into every corner, and under every hedge, 
to spy out any weeds that may have been left ; and he 
says, "Not one weed shall grow on this farm." But where 
is thy corn, farmer? "I have no corn." Where is thy 
wheat? "I have no wheat." Where are thy fruits? "I 
have no fruits." What hast thou ? Noiveecls! 

How many there are who are circumspect, and are in 
earnest, not only, but whose whole care is not to speak a 
wrong word, nor to speak a word in the wrong place ! The 
result is that they succeed in doing nothing. Their life is 
comparatively vapid and void, because they have adapted 
themselves and confined themselves to one single element. 
They violate no propriety, but they are living negative in- 
stead of positive lives. 

Now, to avoid evil is good only so far as it impels you to 
perform the right ; only so far as it leads you to grow in the 
direction of true manliness. 

We feel that for one to be equable and steady of mind, 
and to be even sober, is not criminal : we believe that it be- 
comes a man who is the creature of two worlds sometimes to 
be thoughtful and grave ; but for a man to act as though he 



158 ALL-SIPEDNJESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE, 

thought simply avoiding wrong and then looking solemn was 
the whole duty of man — this is a serious mistake. I do not 
count it against a man if he is so made that he cannot help 
being solemn — because I have known a great many solemn 
men who were, after all, good men, notwithstanding the fact 
that solemnity is a mask behind which the devil dances in 
more hypocrisies than any other ; I do not blame men for 
being solemn where it is natural to them, and they cannot 
avoid it ; but where men emphasize solemnity, and feel that 
going through the ritual of duty day by day consists in main- 
taining a negative propriety, and being intensely solemn every 
day as if their thoughts were dwelling on evil subjects — that 
kind of piety I condemn. And yet, how many affect it ! and 
how little it affects them ! 

Others there are who, because their natures are emotive, 
and because their feelings are moved as easily as mercury is 
moved up and down in the barometric tube, have the idea 
that being intense, and feeling quick and deeply, and pouring 
out their emotions readily, is being like somebody. They love 
to see men who have feeling. They are themselves children 
of emotion, and they intensify that quality ; and it is a thing 
to be desired. As calmness and tranquility are to be desired, 
so are tides and flames. But if one gives himself simply and 
only to these ; if his Christian experience is to be measured 
by outbursts of feeling, by periodic emotions, coming to-day 
and skipping to-morrow, like the chills and fever — if one so 
regards religion, how imperfect is his understanding of it ! 
How treacherous, how transient, how foolish are those hopes, 
those inspirations, and those endeavors after a manly life 
which are not permanent ! 

There be others who devote themselves to practical life, 
as though that were the whole of character-building. They 
do not esteem very highly those men who spin cobwebs in 
moonshine, as they say ; who indulge in what they call meta- 
physics. They do not think very much of philosophy, which 
bewilders men, and sets them by the ears, and leads them 
into everlasting disputes. And as to sentiments, they do not 
believe in them. They like substantial things. They like to 
see men who take flour to the poor, and carry tea and coffee 



ALL-SIDEDNES8 IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 159 

and sugar to the needy. They admire those who make pant- 
aloons and give them to ragged boys. And so do I. I like 
practical piety. I like to see that kind of godliness which 
serves the outward wants of men. But why should some 
persons say, " What is the use of sentiments ? What is the 
use of inspiration ? What is the use of a faith which lifts 
men into the invisible ?" And why should other persons go 
to the opposite extreme, and say, "What is the use of prac- 
tical religion ?" Both of them are necessary to the symmetry 
of Christian character. Faith that works by love, and love 
that works by imagination — these are to be united in every 
true Christian. They should go hand in hand. And yet, how 
are men continually, as it were, standing on one leg, as if 
both feet were not needful to locomotion ! 

How many men insist on single virtues ! One person is 
frugal and economical ; and his criticism of his fellow-man 
is on that point which is over against his own virtue. An- 
other person is generous to a fault ; and his criticism is on 
that point which is over against his virtue. Men's criticisms 
of others are generally laudations of themselves. How many 
men are partial in their development ! How few put on the 
whole armor which belongs to a man when he is fully devel- 
oped in mind and in body, and stand perfectly clad with 
weapons both offensive and defensive ! 

Let me say, still further, that to build up the character 
all together is much easier than to build up any single quali- 
ties. There is a great advantage in the coherence of virtues. 
One virtue tends to find another, and to help another. Thus 
the supreme virtue, the mother of all virtues, the fountain 
from which every virtue flows — the great disposition of Be- 
nevolence — that fundamental and controlling law of Love 
which likens us to God — the law which Christ himself exem- 
plified — that law which is, if I may so say, God (for God is 
love) — that one virtue in a man tends to devolop out of itself 
the whole circle of virtues ; and these strengthen each other 
by contiguity and sympathy. If a man is in the disposition 
of a true benevolence, it is easy for him to cultivate humble- 
ness of mind ; and he that cultivates humbleness of mind 
finds little difficulty in joining meekness with it ; and he 



160 ALL-SIDEDNES8 IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

that has humility and meekness always has patience ; and he 
that has humility and meekness and patience finds very little 
trouble in the matter of long-suffering ; and he that has long- 
suffering has faith ; and he that has faith has hope ; and he 
that has faith and hope has zeal, and he that has zeal spring- 
ing from faith and hope, and all the other virtues which take 
their rise in love, has knowledge. For in spiritual discern- 
ment love is the great interpreter. Love is the one philoso- 
pher. It comprehends all other graces. It teaches us, and 
it inspires us. We think under its inspiration in various di- 
rections. It impregnates the understanding, so that we 
become wise in things which cannot be brought out by sci- 
ence, and which are transcendent. It is easier, then, for 
men to build up the Christian graces in fellowship, as it is 
easier for a man to travel in company. 

"Iron sharpeneth iron ; so a man shsrpeneth the countenance of 
his friend." 

And so it is with all the virtues. They love company. 
By taking hold of hands they give momentum to each other. 
It is easier for a man to put on the whole armor than a part 
of it. It is easier for a man to be perfectly than* partially 
equipped. 

In view of these considerations, I scarcely need to say that 
the crying fault of men who are attempting to live Christian 
lives is feebleness, or weakness. Men lack strength, vigor, 
intensity, breadth. Christians are not voluminous. Too 
often men who attempt to live Christian lives are so narrow 
in their conceptions that when they have put one faculty 
in sovereignty, they refuse to put confidence in any other 
faculty ; and they strive to humble themselves all through. 
Men often, by subduing the strongest elements, feelings, af- 
fections of their nature, become almost negative. 

I have seen many men who were made men by joining 
the church; I have seen many men to whom the church was 
as the garden of the Lord, where they had root-room, and 
room for their boughs, and where the wild boar of the fields 
could not whet his tusk against their trunk ; I have seen 
many men to whom the church was as a father, a nurse, and 
a mother ; and yet, on the other hand, I have seen the 



ALZ-SIDEDNESS IN CHBISTIAN LIFE. 161 

church spoil men who before were genial, sympathetic, full 
of cheer, full of laughing gladness. They thought when they 
came into the church they must be severe with themselves, 
and gird themselves, and lace themselves so that they could 
not breathe. They came into the church with a generous 
flow of natural affections ; but they put on artificial manners, 
and became cold and uninteresting. They did not sanctify, 
by the power of love, the gifts which God had given them. 
Having wit and a general buoyancy of spirits, instead of let- 
ting them flash out in the service of religion, they thought it 
necessary to rake them up and hide them ; and so they be- 
came inane. They were good — yes, just as juices boiled 
down till they are saccharine are good. Many persons boil 
themselves down to a kind of molasses goodness. It is not 
such goodness as there is . in the live peach, in the luscious 
apple, or in the delicious pear. It is not such goodness as 
has in it the power and the sharpness which belong to a com- 
bination of acid and sweet. It is inspissated goodness. It 
is partial goodness, joined to feebleness, caution, fear. 

How many persons are in the world as flies that have been 
caught in some sweet liquid, that have got out at last upon 
the side of the cup, drabbled, and that crawl up slowly, buz- 
zing a little to clear their wings ! Just such Christians I have 
seen, creeping up the side of churches, soul-poor, imperfect, 
without inspiration, and drabbled. If it must needs be so, 
that is better than nothing ; it is better than to die without 
moral rebound ; but this is not the whole career. You are 
called to manliness, and to strength, and to variety, and to 
development. You are called to an all-sidedness in Christian 
life. 

"Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to 
knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience 
godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly 
kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they 
make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowl- 
edge of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

These, and whatever good things there are anywhere, add to 
your stock; for this it is to be a Christian. It is to have in 
one's self all attainable excellences, or to seek them. They 
are to be sought by different degrees of power and skill, there 



162 ALL-JSIDEDNEJSS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

being gradations all the way up. There is every variety and 
every vicissitude. Nevertheless, it is the ideal of a Christian 
man that he should be a Christian all over, all the time, in 
everything, growing stronger and stronger, better and better, 
to the end. That is a noble standard. 

I am not ashamed to preach thus to young men and maid- 
ens. I do not stand to rebuke them, and say, " You are sin- 
ful because you are living too much in the enjoyment of 
pleasure." I say to them : You are called to religion because 
there is the broadest pleasure in it. It is a pure and undy- 
ing fountain. It enlarges you. It makes you more than you 
can make yourselves in the ways in which you are living. I 
blame you for narrowness. I inveigh against you for throwing 
yourselves away. Because you emasculate your nature; because 
you are so much in your own light ; because you are content 
to eat such poor food, and to have such meager joys; because 
you are spending the little that you have to no purpose ; be- 
cause you waste your transient hours, and do not care for the 
eternity that rolls before you — this is why I blame you. This 
is why I scoff at you. This is why I ridicule you. This is why 
I say, " Fool ! fool ! " to you. I say it, not because you are 
strong and courageous. Strength and courage are good. Be 
more strong, more courageous, more bold, more joyful. Take 
in the whole sense of what a man's life is in this world. Find, 
if you can, an ideal of manhood that is like the Christian 
ideal — so generous ; so sweet ; so in affinity with everything 
that goes upward ; so opposed to everything that goes down- 
ward ; so in alliance with noble instincts for this life and for 
the life that is to come. 

It is in accordance with this ideal of Christian manhood 
that I call you to be men in Christ Jesus — not sectarians; not 
wasp-waisted, critical Christians; I call you, not to narrowness, 
and gloom, and despondency, but to energy, to combat, to 
victory, to joy, to hope, to all firmness and courage, and to 
the realization in the eternal sphere of that which here we 
dimly conceive, and there shall see face to face. 

May God give to us who are in the Christian life more of 
the symmetry, more of the richness and sweetness, which be- 
long to the ideal Christian. May God call from their 



ALL-8IDEDNE88 IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 163 

thoughtlessness, from their narrow, imperfect, unripe ways, 
those who are walking without God and without hope in the 
world. Remember how fast life is going ; and if you have 
anything to do, young man, do it speedily. You are not 
far from Greenwood. Not on the rose is the blush fairer than 
on your cheek; nor in the lily is the white more delicate than 
on your brow ; and yet, in a year flowers will grow oyer some 
of you. You are on your way ; you are not far from the 
grave ; and it behooves every one of you, when you know not 
who shall go and who shall stay, to have your loins girt about, 
and your lamp trimmed and burning, that at whatever hour 
the Bridegroom and the Bride shall come, you may be ready 
to go out and meet them. 



164 ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

Thotj ever-blessed God, we thank thee for ail the light which has 
been shed abroad from thee upon the earth. We thank thee that we 
know what we know.* Though it is but a part; though it is but 
dim; though we see through a glass darkly, we rejoice that even the 
little is so effulgent; and we look forward with ardent expectation to 
the disclosures of the life that is to come. For if that which the 
senses may understand be glorious, how much more glorious is that 
which shall transport our ransomed spirits to the paradise above. We 
rejoice that thou art made known to us by so many .tokens; by so 
many symbols. We rejoice that the names with which thou hast 
crowned thyself are names which bring to us everything that is pure, 
and just, and true, and loving. We rejoice that thou hast developed 
in us the power of somewhat understanding thee. And thou s.ainest 
more and more refulgent as we ourselves grow deeper and purer and 
more in love with that which is true and just. But what shall be the 
vision when we come to that world of blessedness where there is no 
sun, nor need of it ; and no moon ; but where thou art the light ; where 
day and night are gone; where there are no marks of limitation; 
where there are no lines of latitude or longitude; where there is no 
change of seasons known ; and where the spirit-form shall understand 
as it is understood ! We aspire to that glorious vision. We know our 
inferiority. We feel the continual pressure of temptation. We know 
the weaknesses of life. We stumble, and we fall. We are verily little 
children, without their simplicity and their purity. We have all their 
faults, but how little have we of their excellence! We confess what 
we are now as an argument of thy mercy ; for thou art one that canst 
spare. Thou art infinite in compassion and in sympathy, and art 
drawn to us by that which would repel us one from another. How 
proud we are against those who offend us! How hard and cruel are 
we in our revenges! How quick we are in our anger! But thou hast 
infinite patience. Thou art longsufferiug. Thou dost wait to be 
gracious. Thou canst not speak of thy kindness but as loving kind- 
ness, nor of thy mercies but as tender mercies. We crown thee with 
our praise. We draw near to thee with the little confidence which 
our hearts know how to give. We give thee the best. We aspire, we 
yearn, to know, and to be better worthy to know thee. Fill us with 
thy Spirit, that we may achieve great things in life, in courage, in 
patience, in bountif ulness, in perseverance, and in every good word 
and work. We pray lor those who labor in our midst; for all who 
teach; for all who have compassion upon the poor; for all who seek 
to visit waste places, and are drawing around about them, by the law 
of kindness, those who need succor and help. Will the Lord bless 
them, and crown their efforts day by day with radiant hope and with 
gladness. We pray that they may not be weary in well-doing. Even 
in the most desperate cases may they be sustained by the thought 
that they shall reap in due season it* they faint not. 

We pray that more and more those who are in darkness may be 
brought into light. Have compassion upon those who are out of the 
way. Look upou those who are vicious and criminal, and have 



ALL-SIDEDNESS IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. 165 

compassion upon them. Our hearts, when we think of the multitudes 
who are suffering, and are ignorant, and are filled with evil, are turned 
within us; and we pray for them, and entreat that influences maybe 
brought to bear upon them which shall ransom them from their ad- 
versaries, and bring them back from all that is bad to all that is good, 
manly and pure, in Christian living. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to go with all those 
who to-day are preaching the gospel. Bless the sermons that have 
been preached in so far as they have set forth the truth as it is in 
Christ Jesus. And we pray that the light of the gospel may be shed 
abroad over the earth, leaving no unillumined place. We pray that 
thy work may be continued until the knowledge of God shall be a 
universal possession ; until the love of Christ shall dwell in all our 
hearts, and subdue them to thyself. 

Let thy kingdom come, and thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, wilt thou grant thy blessing to rest upon the word 
which has been spoken. May it encourage men to endeavor. May it 
inspire effort in those who are listless and careless. We pray that 
thou wilt open the understandings of thy people, and the understand- 
ings of those who are living without Christian hope and Christian 
purpose. We pray that thou wilt bless this church, and make it as 
the garden of the Lord ; and may the truths which are spoken here 
from day to day be divinely guided, divinely inspired, divinely 
blessed. Accept our thanks for the service, the joy and the experi- 
ence of the day. Go home with us to-night. Abide with us through 
all the week. May we so live with thee that we shall find that thou 
art doing to us what the sun is doing to all the land over which it 
shines, bringing forth all sweet and blessed things. So, as we draw 
near to the heavenly land, may we be as they that draw near to the 
tropics, where growth never ceases. And, leaving behind all in- 
firmities, all weights and all bondage, may we rise disenthralled, per- 
fected, to rejoice in thy presence evermore. And to the Father, the 
Son and the Holy Spirit, shall be the praise. Amen. 



FACT AID FANCY. 



FACT AND FANCY. 



<w While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things 
which are not seen : for the things which are seen are temporal ; but 
the things which are not seen are eternal." — II. Cor. iv., 18. 



The relations of the ideal and the practical, of the visible 
and the invisible, of the real and the imaginative, are of tran- 
scendent importance. It has been said that everybody in the 
world is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian — Plato standing 
for ideal philosophy, and Aristotle for the real and practical. 
Everybody tends, it is said, to follow one or the other. No : 
the perfect man nnites them both, and is at once Aristotelian 
and Platonist. His feet standing on solid facts, his head 
goes philosophizing, and his heart is the balance between 
them ; so that it is wiser to say that he who begins as a Plato- 
nist should end also as an Aristotelian, and that he who 
begins as an Aristotelian should end also as a Platonist ; 
for the two together bring a man where, if he will, he can see 
One that is greater than either Plato or Aristotle — Jesus 
Christ, the perfect embodiment, in this world, of the intel- 
lectual, the emotive, and the practical elements of life, that 
are so often dissevered and represented partially. Some 
men being full of emotion, some being full of thought, some 
being full of morality, the true man is made up from them 
all in harmonious relations. 

The tendency which God has implanted in the soul is from 
the visible toward the invisible. Consider what generaliza- 
tions are in science. We collect facts ; we observe their like- 
nesses and dissimilarities ; we deduce from a sufficient num- 
ber of collected and observed facts certain truths ; and they 

Sunday Morntng, November 9, 1373. Lesson : I. John. iv. nraxs (Plymouth 
Colloction) : Nos. 170, 270. 3&?. 



168 FACT AND FANCY. 

are truths which have no visibleness. They are to be found, 
not in physical reality, but in the imagination or mind of 
man. They are invisible, and yet they are irresistible. 

You cannot develop a savage tribe without perceiving that 
the normal law of development is in the direction of abstract 
truths instead of isolated and disconnected facts. 

When ideality, or the imaginative, is added to the physical, 
then men are understood to have ideals ; and if they be poet- 
ical, and have the sense of beauty, then refinement and the 
esthetic elements come in ; and if you forsake the first phys- 
ical observations, every step, intellectual, imaginative or emo- 
tive, is a step away from the visible and material towards the 
invisible, but not less real — for a thought is as real as the 
thing that makes the thought ; and the relation between 
two thoughts is just as much a fact as if they were two 
outward shapes with different colors and different proper- 
ties. 

The relation of this truth to those experiences which have 
to 'do with the operations of life is a matter of great im- 
portance. All large wisdom consists in the application of 
the higher invisible qualities which we have deduced; in bring- 
ing back again these iu visible qualities and re-incarnating them 
in facts. He is not a painter who simply copies a tree just as 
it is. A photograph of a tree is not a work of art. He who, 
observing trees, brings to bear upon them the imagination, 
the fancy, the reason, the emotions, the law of association, 
so that from the sight of them there arises in his mind an 
ideal conception, and who then brings back again to the 
canvas these idealized trees, even if he takes the visible 
ones for his model, adds to them those subtler graces which 
come from him, and do not hang upon them — he who does 
this is an artist. First he takes things seen, and of these he 
frames, in the higher realm of thought, ideal conceptions. 
These ideal conceptions vanish, evaporate, if they remain 
ideal. If he would make them valuable he reduces them 
to a visible form, but with features which did not belong 
to them until they had been through his mind. So the 
human mind may be said to be a womb, as it were, oat £* 
which lower forms are born, first into ideas, and then into 



FACT AND FANCY. 169 

things. There is a perpetual reciprocal interchange by which 
facts become principles, and by which, then, these principles 
become facts again, as rules and measures and guides for 
practical life. 

You may say that the same thing is going on between the 
human mind and the visible world that is going on between 
the ocean and the sky. All the water is subject to evapora- 
tion; it rises in a continuous vapor ; and when in the sun 
it has disported itself long enough, down it comes again in 
the form of drops, and flows through rills and rivulets and 
rivers back to the sea. The life of the sea and of the land 
are dependent on this continual change of the visible water 
into invisible vapor, and of the invisible vapor into visible 
water again. 

There is a like circulation in the functions of the soul. 
There is the reality of the outward life lifted up by soul- 
power into the form of an invisible life, and there is the 
bringing back again of this invisible life as a means of carry- 
ing on the process of growth and culture among men. This 
forming of loftier conceptions, and applying them to prac- 
tical concerns, is the continuous law of Christian civilization, 
and of all civilization. It is a process which, the more you 
examine it, the more you will find it to be true. 

It is out of this double action which is going on, or which 
ought to go on in all men, that I propose to develop certain 
knowledges in reference to practical life. 

There is light thrown, in the first place, upon those who 
are theorists in religious life ; upon doctrinaires ; upon those 
who live to follow out and to deduce great truths. It is cer- 
tainly right for men to reason and to carry their reason as far 
as they can ; but he who dwells only in the higher and subtler 
elements, he who deals with ideals, seldom going back to 
facts, becomes impractical and unfruitful ; he is a partialist, 
and a partialist remote from life ; and he is neither very 
useful to himself nor a very safe guide to others. Theo- 
ries and principles are to be tried by their relations to 
practical life. I have sometimes said that life was a test 
of truth ; that that which men believe on philosophical prin- 
ciples, being carried into outward life, will very soon show 



170 FA CT AND FANCY. 

whether it is harmonious or at discord with it. Life is, m an 
important sense, the test of truth. 

We see, secondly, what is the true sphere and the true 
character of the reverist. There are many who suppose them- 
selves to be dwelling in religious meditation when they are only 
dwelling in a religious revery. Kevery is the exhalation, I 
might say, of sentiment. It is the emotional nature of man 
touched by the imagination, rising out of facts, and standing 
above them, — having no other connection. with them, than in 
looking at them as pictures. A reverist is one who, having for- 
saken practical life, is dwelling in ether, from which he never 
returns in any practical or beneficent form. How easy is 
the heroism which goes on in revery, when we have lost all 
sight of real life and facts, and perform great deeds in imag- 
ination ! How easy it is for us to sit with closed eyes, on a 
balmy day, in some shady nook, during summer, and enact 
the part of a hero ! How easy it is for us to go out as a vic- 
torious general ! Marching no longer wearies us. "With what 
ease we abstain from food ! How brave we are in the endur- 
ance of all the hardships of the camp, — the aerial camp, — the 
camp of the hearth ! How, when the shock of battle comes 
on, are we very knights — a Cceur de Lion, everyone of us! 
How we are wounded ! How we are nursed, lying in our 
tent ! And what wondrous gratitude springs from our sense 
of obligation ! Meanwhile, all round about us are those who 
are going on with the realities of life which we do not share. 
We do not take hold and help in the duties of the household. 
We reserve for ourselves the best places. We are so refilled 
that nothing must come to us that is rough. W^e become 
self-conscious and exacting. Thus, while the reverist is 
dwelling in visions of heroic life, he is, in fact, a self-seeker — 
a selfish person. 

Now, if revery acts in us to quicken the dull sense which 
over-addiction to matter produces ; if revery operates upon 
us as silvery vapor under the rays of the sun operates on the 
face of nature, forming beauteous shapes, and making the 
landscape more attractive, then it is beneficial ; but there are 
thousands and thousands of persons who think they are some- 
thing when they are nothing. They think they are some- 



FACT AND FANCY. 171 

thing because they dwell in such reveries ; hut their practical 
life is barren and poor and selfish and mean. 

Then, thirdly, there are the nieditatists. I have been 
taught a good deal that meditation is a Christian excellence 
— and so it is ; but meditation is largely a running of the mind- 
mill ; and certainly it does not do any good to run the mill 
when there is no grist in it; and yet, thousands meditate when 
they have nothing to meditate on. Indeed, the great majority 
of men are unable to supply themselves with food for contin- 
uous reflection. When they meditate, or suppose they do, there 
is nothing that is really profitable in the operation. There 
is not one man in a thousand among intelligent men, who is 
able to take up a train of thought and carry it on connectedly 
and consecutively. Heading is good because it brings some- 
thing to you ; memory may also help you ; and there may be 
times when under strong excitement the mind is lifted up 
into positions where it can carry on noble trains of thought — 
and far be it from me to undervalue them ; but where it is 
thought that every person must meditate every day, how pit- 
eous is the exemplification of meditation ! 

I meditated when I was young, with a healthy body, with 
an exquisite sensibility to fact, and with undisclosed and un- 
developed intellectual pow T ers. I meditated — or thought I 
did ; and when I woke up I was watching the creeping of a 
tly on the wall. I meditated — or tried to — about heaven, and 
about the wondrous truths wdiich belonged to the heavenly 
state ; and when I came to myself I was watching the birds 
out of the window. I meditated ; but meditation with me 
consisted in constantly checking myself and bringing myself 
back to the thing in hand ; for as the thing in hand was 
nothing, it was hard to stay to it. 

Many think that religious life requires meditation ; but I say 
that religious life first requires kno wledge and consideration ; 
and the question is, whether a man can sit down by himself 
and consider truths which are disconnected from the practical 
flow of his daily duties. My impression is that he cannot. 
One cannot carry on a process of meditation except in con- 
nection with things that are occurring in the world and under 
his hand. 



172 FACT AND FANCY. 

We may now perceive, fourthly, the position of men wh« 
are moralists according to the common use of that term. 
There are many persons who are so disgusted with the vision- 
ary forms of life that they rebound to the other extreme. 
They say that metaphysics are unprofitable, that they are dry, 
that they mislead, that the imagination is a false guide, that 
the only real man is the man who sticks to reality, and that 
our business is to live about as well as we can, and then trust 
God for the rest. That is certainly a truth. Everybody has 
to live as well as he can, and has to trust God for the rest ; 
but that is not the question : the question is, whether a man 
who stands on the ground which is usually called morality 
has aspiration; whether he is endeavoring to develop himself; 
and whether his conception of what his life and character 
ought to be is such that the invisible is perpetually tending 
to his elevation, and to the development of the visible in him. 
Morality usually consists in a sort of loose compliance with 
the civil law of the land — and that is right ; in a sort of mild 
obedience to neighborhood customs and rules — and that is 
right ; in a sort of general avoidance of the grosser forms of 
indulgence which public sentiment condemns — and that is 
right ; in an observance of those courtesies on which the ease 
of intercourse in society so much depends — and that is right. 
As for the rest, it is said that a man should be a good father, 
a good husband, a good neighbor, a good citizen, and a good 
business man. It is claimed that that is about all you can 
expect of a man. 

But those who are usually called moralists, and who con- 
tinually play round about their duty as fathers and hus- 
bands and neighbors and citizens, are so slavishly addicted 
to fact that they have very little ideality ; and having no 
picture spread out before them, having no constantly re- 
curring conception that condemns them and rebukes them all 
the time, that leads them to higher endeavor, and that all the 
while shows' them that they have not reached that after which 
they aspire, they become dim, dull, lethargic, stationary, 
stagnant. 

Fifthly, we may from this view of the double-action of 
man, from the ideal to the real, and from the real to the ideal, 



FACT AND FANCY. 173 

give a practical solution to many questions that are asked, 
and that ought to be asked, of parents by their children. 
There is the question, for instance, as to the profitableness, 
or the injuriousness of reading — especially the reading of fic- 
tion. If all fictions — all theological fictions, all legal fictions, 
all business fictions, and all literary fictions — were taken 
away, there would be very little left which we call common 
life, and which is familiar to us. Nobody who has not made 
it a matter of investigation has any idea of how largely the 
imagination is made to be the alphabet out of which the real 
is spelled. No parent has brought up a child who has not 
been obliged to betake himself or herself from the real to the 
imaginary. The moment a child is old enough to have 
glimpses of things that rise above the mere physical realm, he 
asks questions which are puzzling ; and the parent in answer- 
ing them almost always finds it necessary to tell the child 
some little story, some little fable, some little fiction, and 
generally winds up by saying, " That is as near as I can tell 
you now, my child ; but when you grow up and are as big as 
mamma, you will understand it as well as she does." Often- 
times fiction is nearer the truth than truth itself is. For in- 
stance, if you undertake to explain to a child the distinction 
between the judicial, the executive and the legislative powers 
of the nation, I think you will find yourself, even if you un- 
derstand the idea perfectly, unable to bring it, in its com- 
plete, unmodified form, into the mind of the child. In other 
words, how are you going to put a truth that is large enough 
to fill your mind into a child's mind ? Can you get a full 
quart measure into the space of a gill ? No. What do you 
do ? You go down to the child's plane of life, and imagine 
about what he can understand, and reduce that to the form 
of some little fairy story, or fable, or fiction, in which, per- 
haps, the ant, the bird, or the beast plays a part. You take 
things which are familiar to the child, and with them repre- 
sent, as well as you can, the truth which you wish to impart ; 
and the child smiles, and thinks he has an idea — and so he 
has ; but it is not the whole of that which you have in your 
mind. What you have told him is not true. If you were to 
tell him the truth, it would be nothing at all to him. That 



1 H FACT AND FANCY. 

is to say, if you were to state to him the actual facts, he would 
interpret them according to the undeveloped state of his mind, 
and would not understand them. 

The picture goes into the camera obscura bottom side up, 
and you are obliged, by a second set of mirrors, to bring it 
back to its right position. And when you make your block 
for printing a picture, you make it so that that part which 
belongs on the right side is on the left, and that which be- 
longs on the left is on the right. You have to make your 
block backwards in order to have your picture forwards. The 
block must be false to the eye if you would have the picture, 
when it is printed, true to the eye. 

. This process of fiction has marked the development of 
civilization all the way up. Men have come to higher quali- 
ties by an imperfect rendering of things. When things have 
been interpreted in a lower language, such as men could un- 
derstand, they have been imperfect and fictitious in a great 
measure. 

If, then, one asks, " Is the use of fiction improper" ? I 
say, It is scarcely a question whether you will use it or not. 
It is indispensable, yea, inevitable, that you should use it. 
You cannot help using it. If it is not right to use it, then 
our Master was a sinner above all men ; for when literature is 
dead, and men are forgotten, those magnificent parables, those 
grand fictions of his, such as the story of the Prodigal Son, 
will stand in everlasting remembrance. Nowhere more than 
in the Scriptures is fiction used for purposes of instruction. 

Is it true, then, since fiction is wholesome and desirable, 
that the more you have of it the better ? A great many per- 
sons reason in that way. Ha! because it is useful for you to 
take (asking the pardon of one school) twenty drops of pare- 
goric, would it be beneficial for you to take a gallon ? Be- 
cause ten slices of bread are enough for a growing schoolboy, 
would twenty loaves be better ? Is there no measure or rule 
in these things ? Because there is a proper use of fiction, is 
every use of it beneficial ? 

According to the principles which we have developed this 
morning, just so far forth as fiction enables one to rise above 
the vulgarity, the commonness and the sordidness of the real 



FACT AND FANCY. 175 

without separating himself from practical life, it is beneficial; 
but he who so reads fiction that he forgets to come back again 
to practical life, reads it to his harm— to his damage. 

Begin, if you will, upon the earth ; but you must rise ; 
and having risen, you must come back again to earth from 
whence you ascended, bringing something more than you 
found when you took your flight. A reading of fiction which 
throws off care, or a reading of fiction which brings knowl- 
edge to men's minds, as does much of the fiction that is writ- 
ten nowadays (for many of the fictions of to-day are histories, 
biographies, moral philosophies, scientific treatises, not a few 
writers of fiction having taken imaginary voyages in the air, 
beneath the surface of the terraqueous globe, and through 
the water, for the sake of setting before men truths of science 
which have been found out) — such a reading of fiction is bene- 
ficial. He who reads fiction to rest himself, to refresh him- 
self, to lift himself above the dead level of the vulgar real, 
reads it to his advantage and profit ; but he who reads it to 
abide in it, never giving back a better man to his every-day 
household or business duties, is hurt by it. It has decom- 
posed the texture of his mind. He is not so good a man as 
he was before. And a man to be benefited by the reading 
of fiction not only must be lifted up by it above the affairs of 
earth, but must come back to those affairs again with renewed 
strength. It is said that Antaous renewed his strength when 
he touched the ground ; but we renew our strength when we 
rise into the air. We derive our strength from the invisible 
rather than from the visible. 

It is not, as a general thing, a very safe or wholesome 
process to excite strong feelings or emotions which have no 
proper outlet. There is a great deal of unwholesome effect 
produced by going to meetings. For instance, where a man 
goes to exciting religious meetings for several nights of the 
week, where he habitually attends religious services on Sun- 
day by which he is lifted up to a great height in his emotive 
and ideal nature, if he never comes back again to the ordinary 
affairs of life with increased fidelity, his condition is not im- 
proved ; it is made worse ; for to go to church and have 
strong feelings excited, and not have those feelings applied 



176 FACT AND FANCY. 

to daily life and duty, is positively injurious. There is such 
a thing as spiritual intemperance, as well as spirituous in- 
temperance. 

If, on the other hand, a man returns from the kindling 
in him of a high ideal state to he more faithful as a friend, 
to he more heroic in disinterested actions, to he more patient 
in troubles, and to he strong where he is tempted to be weak, 
then this stimulation is beneficial to him. "Wherever by 
preaching, or any other means, one is brought into a very 
high state of feeling — a state of feeling higher than he can 
work off in practical ways — it is injurious to him. 

That is why you shall see men of very eminent religious 
experience, but of very faulty ethical life. People say of 
t>hem, "They are insincere persons — they are hypocrites." 
There are insincere persons, there are hypocrites, among such 
men ; but a great many of them are a great deal more incon- 
sistent than hypocritical. Of inconsistent people not one in 
a thousand is necessarily a hypocrite. 

Many persons think that emotion is religion ; but it is 
not. • A person may be greatly hindered by emotion. One 
may have such rapturous views of God, of heaven, and of 
that rest which remaineth for the people of God, as to be un- 
fitted for either heaven or earth. 

Which is the better mother, she that is intensely emotive, 
or she that is very practical ? The one never caresses her 
children ; she never seizes her darling and kisses him " all to 
pieces"; she never talks sentiment; she is quiet ; she wears 
a placid face ; her eye is like an open book full of pictures ; 
her presence is peace ; her heart carries warmth wherever she 
goes ; there is nothing which the child does which she is not 
cognizant of ; she is incessantly inspiring and lifting him up : 
and she is all the while molding his character by invisible 
touches. He cannot remember that she ever went into a 
paroxysm of affection toward him ; and yet there is not a 
thought of feeling in his memory that is not twined with his 
recollection of her. She was the doing mother. She was the 
mother whose feeling worked itself out in perpetual fidelity, 
and tenderness, and sweetness, and lovableness. Her life 
consisted in turning the power of a great angelic heart into 



FACT AND FANCY. 177 

that which was physical, in order to make that physical 
spring up with diyine colors and blossoms like those of the 
eternal sphere. 

Another mother, right across the street, is all vitality and 
vivacity and imagination ; and her children are her " dar- 
lings"; they are " precious little angels," and she is running 
after one and another of them all the time, throwing out her 
arms, and saying, " Come to my bosom"; and yet their 
clothes are neglected, and so is their training. She loves 
them too much to work for them. Her love for them pours 
over ; but they grow up wild and ignorant. 

Now, which is the better mother, the one that has a great 
deal of feeling, but comparatively little practice, or the one 
that has comparatively little apparent feeling, but a great deal 
of practice ? 

Many and many a river works. The Merrimac runs 
with a small channel. It is called a prodigious river ; but I 
could almost ford it. Where are its waters ? For a hundred 
miles they are busy turning vast wheels. They have turned 
out to the right and to the left, and gone to work ; and that 
is better than for them to be in the middle of a deep channel, 
and not work. So there are great hearts that turn the cur- 
rents of emotion into actual practical deeds. It is safe and 
wholesome to have intense feelings, high excitements, if they 
take on practical forms ; but it is neither safe nor wholesome 
to have such feelings and excitements if they do not take on 
such forms. 

Why is it that the skillful surgeon can stand by the side 
of a suffering patient, and take the dissecting knife, and 
cut down to the nerve, and along the most delicate veins 
and arteries, and cause that patient the most exquisite tor- 
ment, and do it composedly, with his hand as firm as a rock ? 
You say he has overcome his feeling. I say that his human- 
ity, his sensibility, his tenderness, have all gone into his 
action, and are embodied in what he is doing. His act is a 
kindness; and it is a kindness greater, frequently, a thou- 
sand times, than the forbearance of it would be. To do a 
thing that is beneficial for the sake of another is often a mill- 
ion times better than to do a thing that is pleasant for the 



178 FACT AND FANCY. 

sake of that other. It indicates more love and more kind- 
ness. 

Mow, to be heroes in novels, and never anywhere else, is 
demoralizing. To be full of overflowing sympathy in fiction 
that has no inspiration is demoralizing. And if any young 
people want to know my opinion about novels and stories, my 
opinion is this : use fiction as jovl would spices in your diet. 
!STo man takes a quart of cloves, nor exhausts the cruet, at a 
single meal. These things may be used with moderation to 
season one's food, with, but they are not to be used alone ; 
and so fictions, while they are not to be resorted to exclusive- 
ly, may be used with discretion to season life with. If you 
find that using them brings you back to duty with more alac- 
rity, with more cheer, and with more aptitude ; if you find 
that it makes you better in your relations to your fellow-men, 
then it does not hurt you, and you are at liberty to use them ; 
but if you find that using them makes you morose ; if you 
find that it gives you a distaste for work ; if you find that it 
inclines you to run into a hole that you may get away from 
your fellow-men ; if you find that it makes you unkind, dis- 
obliging and selfish, then you may be sure that, whether it 
injures anybody else or not, it injures you. 

This law which I have unfolded, that we must first go 
from the real to the ideal, and then come back and incarnate 
the ideal into the real form — this law will throw some light, 
sixthly, on the reason why beauty is almost invariably bene- 
ficial as it is developed in nature, and why art, which is the 
science of beauty, has been on the whole, perhaps, an injury to 
the world. Architecture stands apart, and may be left out ; 
but I think it will be difficult to show that painting and 
sculpture, and all else that goes under the term "fine 
arts," have been a benefit to the world. In the early 
periods of the world art was elevating to a large extent ; but 
as soon as it began to be a thing of beauty for the sake of 
beauty it began to deteriorate. Pre-Eaphaelite art was sincere. 
It was profoundly ignorant of the human form, of combina- 
tion and of perspective ; but there was that intensity of real- 
ity about it which always makes things comely and attractive 
to refined natures. As soon as you come down to the time 



FA CT AND FANCY. 179 

of Raphael, you perceive that he began to make art an in- 
strument of human pleasure. His Madonnas were no longer 
so intensely filled with a sense of God being themselves 
homely, long lank, lean, not knowing nor caring how they 
looked. Raphael's Madonnas got out of all that : they were 
plump ; they were handsome ; and they knew it ; and Ra- 
phael knew it : he meant that they should be ; and he meant 
that nobody looking on these holy pictures should fail to 
admire them. 

Now, why has art been deteriorating and demoralizing 
since it began to be an instrument of pleasure in the world ? 
Because to take real things from life and present them to 
the senses of men, and not to their higher imagination, is 
always deteriorating. If, for instance, the element of beauty 
works in you a conception of purity and nobleness, then 
it helps ; but if it is presented so that it draws you toward 
the sensuous part of your nature, and not toward the spirit- 
ual part, then it hurts. It is safer to go where that art is 
from which our lower nature revolts, than to go where that 
art is which is pleasing to our lower nature. It is dangerous 
to go where art has been employed to make things which are 
sensuous sweeter and pleasanter. We need nothing to help 
the senses. We need nothing to cultivate the passions. 
The strength of life lies in its grosser elements ; and if the 
finer elements are brought in to work downward toward the 
passions and appetites, the effect is damaging. No matter 
how faultless art is in symmetry, no matter how magnificent 
it is in expression, no matter how exquisite it is in coloring, 
and no matter how charming it is in grouping, if its effect is 
not to lift a man higher, but to make him content with his 
lower nature, then it corrupts — and that is what art does 
largely at the present time. 

Now, the beauty of nature does not deteriorate men, be- 
cause it brings them under the operation of the great law by 
which the visible works purely on the invisible, and the in- 
visible on the visible again. This perpetual interchange 
from matter to mind and from mind to matter keeps it in 
health and vigor and power. 

We may also, I remark, seventhly, from the principles 



180 FACT AND FANCY. 

which have been stated, throw some light on the subject oi 
the emotive element in religion. Unquestionably the pure 
emotions of hope and love and joy produce happiness ; but 
where the law of feeling is introduced as a test of religion, 
men render themselves liable to great mistakes, and most fatal 
ones. The true test in religion is not how impressionable one 
is. I put an iEolian harp in my window. The evening 
breeze, having nothing to do, and finding the harp in the 
window, courts it, and an interchange of sweet sounds goes 
on. I take a crowbar and put that in the window. The 
same wind sweeps over it, but it does not sing. Why did the 
harp sing ? For no reason except that its nature was im- 
pressionable. It put forth no volition. There was no merit 
in what it did. Why did not the crowbar sing ? Because it 
was made a crowbar. 

Here is a man with an abdominal temperament. He is 
cold, sluggish, stupid. Under the most stimulating influ- 
ences he barely wakes up. He goes to church. The sermon 
is a most stirring one, but it does not affect him. Right 
over against him are people whose parents were intensely ex- 
citable. Their parents, too, were intensely excitable. There 
was a double and treble charge of nervous tendency given to 
these children ; and they are so sensitive that if you look at 
them they change color, and if you breathe on them they 
quiver all over. They have no difficulty in keeping awake, 
and they are deeply affected by the sermon. 

Some men are made like crowbars, and some like iEolian 
harps ; but if a man is like an iEolian harp, it is no credit to 
him that he sounds quickly ; and if a man is like a crowbar 
it is not his fault that he does not sound readily. The point 
of judgment is to lie in this : A man's temperament being 
given to him, what has he done with it ? f Has he used it to 
augment the sum of his own being, and to benefit the world 
around about him ? These are test questions. 

There are men who are prodigiously joyful in religion, 
but to whom no more merit is due than to the trumpet that 
sounds loudly when a strong man blows it. 

There are other persons who have slow, methodical, unex- 
citable natures ; and, looking at these excitable people, they 



FACT AND FANCY. 1 8 1 

say, "If I were really a good Christian man, there is what I 
should be ; but I cannot get up to where they are. I wish I 
could. God be merciful to me a sinner." 

Now, these unemotive men are as true to their nature as 
are those emotive men, and very likely they are better ; for 
although the emotive men are sensitive to feeling, the unemo- 
tive men never use their feeling as a cascade to fill the air full 
of flying drops and vapor : they use it rather as a mill-stream 
with which to turn the wheel of purpose and activity. 

I mention, eighthly, the relation of our daily duty in 
our several callings to piety. There are those who believe 
that it is impossible for them to be Christians because they 
are so busy ; but that is the reason of all others why a man 
can be a Christian. There are those who think that when 
they have got through the pressure of life they will be Chris- 
tians ; but they will then be in the condition which is most 
unfavorable to piety ; for men need the higher forms of ex- 
perience to animate the practical daily duties of life. 

When you think of saints, you think of pale persons who 
are very still, who stand apart and commune with God, and 
wish they were not alive. Now, when I think of a saint, I 
do not think of any such thing. I believe there are just 
such saints ; I believe there are saints in every relation of 
life ; but I tell you, that brown maiden woman in New En- 
gland, who in the morning rolls her sleeves up above her red 
elbows, and, because her sister, who is the mother of chil- 
dren, is feeble, is not going to let her do the work, and occu- 
pies herself about the house, and takes the burden upon her- 
self, bearing with the. children that she did not bear, and 
gives her life all day with intense industry to lighten that 
sister's toil, and has done it for five years past, and will do 
it for twenty years to come — she is my saint. A busy, bus- 
tling saint she is, to be sure, but she is a saint. Her emo- 
tions do not go off in chance ethereal experiences. Her great 
soul rises into the conception of God, of the other life, of 
love, and of spiritual things ; and instead of dwelling in 
them, she turns them back upon her life as fruitful showers 
which produce worthy deeds ; and people say of her, " She 
is good as goodness. What a homely old good creature she 



182 *M CT AND FANCY. 

is !" I think it more complimentary to be regarded as a per- 
son whose life, in a disinterested way, has embodied or incar- 
nated itself in works of goodness, than to have the Pope 
put your name in the calendar. 

Do you think that that is religion which goes on in the 
closet, but not that which goes on in the store ? I will 
admit that a great deal goes on in the store which is not 
religion ; but I will admit, too, that there is a great deal 
that goes on in the closet which is not religion. The closet 
for the store, and the store for the closet. 

A man is profoundly immersed in mathematical studies — 
and that is right ; he is working out most important prob- 
lems — and that is right ; but when they are all wrought out, 
there is a big bridge to be built ; yast piers are to go up ; the 
apan is to be carried across. The stability of the structure is 
to be tested ; the strength of the materials is to be measured ; 
the strain is to be known ; and when the man has worked out 
all these elements he goes into the field and applies them. 
Then the bridge rises slowly, and it becomes more and more 
comely as it goes up ; and by-and-by it stands in the air, at a 
distance, apparently as filmy as though a cobweb had been 
thrown over the chasm ; and yet it is so strong that the wind, 
the storm, and the tramp of a thousand feet cannot break 
it. And is he any more a mathematician when he is study- 
ing upon these problems than when he is applying them,, and 
working out the result which is to grow from them ? Is not 
the glory of his study shown at the point of application ? 

Your true religious life consists in standing where God 
has put you, and exercising Christian qualities. It consists 
in showing pity where pity is called for ; in manifesting pa- 
tience where patience is required ; in exhibiting gentleness 
where gentleness is needed. It consists in forbearing with 
others ; in bearing others' burdens ; in not being easily pro- 
Yoked ; in thinking no evil, when evil things are "brought to 
you; in loving, where other men would hate; in doing, where 
others would sit still. In other words, as it is indispensable 
that the mathematician should make an application of his 
problem, so it is necessary that the theory of religion should 
be applied to life. 



FACT AND FANCY. 183 

The best part of one's life is the performance of his daily 
duties. All higher motives, ideals, conceptions, sentiments, 
in a man are of no account if they do not come down and 
strengthen him for the better discharge of the duties which 
devolve upon him in the ordinary affairs of life. 

Once more, and lastly. The posver of rising to Christian 
experiences and duties is not a power given to those alone who 
have gone through a mystical change. I think, perhaps, this 
is the head for which I mainly planned out the whole sermon. 
I see a great many persons of whom I say, " I wonder that 
they are not avowedly religious persons." When I talk with 
them, and urge upon them the higher Christian life, I find 
that they have a vague conception of ecclesiastical ceremony, 
or flummery, or both — of the vast, operose, intricate beliefs 
which are prescribed by the Church. And they say, " Oh, it 
is appalling to think what a man has to assume if he becomes 
a Christian ! I do not understand all the doctrines which I 
should be expected to subscribe to ; I cannot understand 
them ; it is useless for me to try ; so I must do my best, and 
take my chance. That is about all I can do." 

There is another class of persons who think they do be- 
lieve all these doctrines — though, thank God, they do not. 
There is a great deal associated with religion that a man 
would be the worse for believing. It is with religion as John 
Milton said it was with the old Fathers : " A net thrown into 
a river, that brings with it stones, and shells, and sticks, and 
leaves, and all manner of rubbish — that," said he, " are the 
JFathers of the Church." Historical religion, religion as it is 
bftentimes represented by religious teachers, is a net with 
here and there a fish in it, but mostly filled with sticks, and 
leaves, and ever so many other things. Much of that 
is rubbish. It has no vitality ; or its mission is ended, so 
that it is to true religion what last year's straw is to this year's 
grain. And where a man says, " I cannot become a Chris- 
tian because I cannot adopt all the ideas of the Church," I 
say to him, "You do not need to." 

Other men say, "It would be insincerity in me to pre- 
tend that I was a Christian. I have never had any such 
conversion as Christians tell of having experienced. I have 



184 FACT AND FANCY. 

sought this great blessing, but it has not come to me." 1 
want to say, in all fidelity and tenderness, to every one who 
is looking upon Christian manhood as depicted in Christ and 
as taught in the New Testament as something difficult of 
attainment : You do not need to wait for any systematic 
belief, or for any special change. Take the duty that stands 
next to you, and attempt to do it for God's sake, and con- 
tinue doing it, and the proper discharge of your obligations 
will of itself develop in you a spiritual state. The tendency 
of right-doing is to raise the doer into a higher mood. 

To take an extraordinary case, if I had the talking with a 
usurious old miser, I would not say to him, ordinarily, 
" Change your whole nature instantly." If he could be 
caught in a great congregation, and subjected to the electrical 
influence of the multitude at a revival, he might be changed 
in an hour, perhaps ; but probably not under other circum- 
stances. I know of a case which illustrates the way in which 
I think such a man should be dealt with. I speak of it with 
profound reverence. 

A woman of a great and royal nature married a man who 
was as small as a man could be and yet be called a man. The 
strength of his being ran to selfishness. They lived together 
two scores of years, and he died in the odor of sanctity ; for 
he became the most benevolent man in all the region ; and 
his name was a proverb for generosity and charity. How 
was he transformed ? Not by lectures ; not by any ideal at- 
tempt to transform himself ; but by the sweet example of her 
to whom he looked up as his queen — though he thought he 
governed her. Everybody knew that she governed him. 
She did not know it, and he did not know it, such is the 
power of a kind and loving heart. She gradually led him to 
the performance of noble deeds. As a little child that is 
tempted to take medicine sips first, and, finding that it is not 
bitter, sips again, and, finding that it is sweet, takes the 
whole spoonful, so this man was tempted to try works of 
beneficence. The experience of the first trial felt so good 
that he tried a little more, and then he tried a little more, 
and then he tried a little more, till by and by he had the con- 
viction that it was a good way to be happy. At length he 



FACT AND FANCY. 18f> 

began to understand the principles which governed doing 
good. He rose into the sphere of the ideal. The conception 
which he formed there he brought down and wrought out in 
acts of humanity. Thus he overcame that which was vulgar 
in his life. He was transformed. He did right things ; and 
the doing right things brought right feelings ; and these right 
feelings led him to do other right things. 

If right feelings do not produce right conduct they die 
out ; and if right conduct does not produce right feelings it 
is because you do not let it. Every good deed that a man 
does is like the germ of a plant. Give it a chance to grow, 
and the earth beneath will counsel it to shoot up, and the sun 
above will counsel it to shoot up ; and up it will come. Every 
right thing done, if it be not hindered, will be fruitful in 
spiritualizing the mind ; and a spiritualized mind will occupy 
itself in doing right things. 

" Do you say, " This is teaching men to undertake to work 
out their own religion" ? Why, yes, I think it is ; and this 
might be fitly joined to the text, " Work out your own salva- 
tion with fear and trembling ; for it is God which worketh in 
you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." 

I say to my tulips and hyacinths and crocuses, "I will 
plant you this fall, and you are going to come up, every 
mother's son of you, in the spring." That is throwing my 
confidence upon nature — no, not upon nature, but upon na- 
ture's God. Do not I know what is going on in heaven ? Do 
not I know that the sun has gone almost as far from us as it 
will go ? Do not I know that he will soon come back with 
all summer blessings in his hand ? Do not I know that the 
plants will grow as soon as the sun finds them and sheds his 
warmth upon them ? 

The Sun of Eighteousness has no north and no south ; he 
is continually exerting his influence upon men ; and to every 
man who has capacity, and will apply it to the thing that is 
next to him, saying, " For Christ's sake I will do the best I 
can," there will be given that power which will refine the 
deed, and make it a spiritual experience ; and that deed will 
produce others ; and these will rise to make aspiration ; and 
that aspiration will come back to water the field, and cause it 



186 FACT AND FANCY. 

to be more fruitful. And so, step by step, doing Christian 
acts will give us trust in Christ. Working for him is to man- 
ifest trust in him. 

" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

The Lord stands behind every duty, and says, " Do it for 
the love of it, and it will strike through to me. I am behind 
every sorrow ; I am behind every burden ; I am behind the 
whole creation ; I am the Deliverer. Creation groans and 
travails in pain until now ; and I know why ; and I stand be- 
hind every trouble, to relieve it. He who stands among 
men doing right for right's sake, and for my sake so far as he 
knows how, does it unto me, and I will reveal myself to 
him." 

If in the doing of right things men rise to a higher con- 
ception, there will come a day when Jesus Christ will rise 
upon them with healing in his beams. There will be times 
when they will say, "I know how God feels." They will 
have experiences which will interpret God to them in strains 
so far above anything that they have ever felt, that they will 
know that they are children of God, that they are bom of 
God, and that the Parent has blessed the child. 

Do not wait for ideal experiences. Begin where you are. 
Refuse wrong things, and do right things. And do not be 
content to do right things in a listless, purposeless way, but 
understand that right deeds produce right feelings, and that 
these feelings act back on conduct, and that the conduct and 
the feelings together bring a man, step by step, up to a higher 
experience. 

There are men in this congregation who know what I 
mean — men that I found afar off — men who were skeptics. 
I said to them, " Do the thing that is right, and light will 
come to you." They took my advice; and little by little 
they have had formed in them the Lord Jesus Christ the 
hope of glory. You are my witnesses. Bear the testimony 
to others. It is right that every man should succor those 
who are in the same strait from which he has been delivered. 
He that has been brought into the right way should guide 
those who are out of the way. Go to those who are dark- 



FACT AND FANCY. 187 

minded and skeptical, and say, " The way to be a Christian 
is to begin to live Christianly. Do that, and follow on, and 
you shall know the Lord." 



PEAYEE BEFOEE THE SERMON.* 

Our Father, we rejoice that thou hast crowned thyself with that 
name, which is to us the name above every other, of love and kind- 
ness. Our thoughts go hack to our childhood, and to the tenderness 
of our parents toward us— to their diligence in our behalf; to their 
suffering for us; to their love for us, which was greater than their 
love for themselves. We go back to the household, which was ordered 
for the good of those who dwelt therein. We thank thee for such 
fidelity, for such examples, for such prayers as theirs. We thank thee 
for all the benign influences that shaped our early life. We thank 
thee that thou hast caused it to be a treasure-house of our memory, 
so that we still talk and think of it with gratitude as years roll by. 
We thank thee that we were so blest in the sanctuary of our homes 
when we were children. We thank thee that thou art still inspiring 
the hearts of so many to fulfill toward their children the work which 
God fulfills toward the race. We thank thee that in so many families 
there is an interpretation of the divine suffering and the divine faith- 
fulness. Not that any of us are able to reflect even the smallest full 
beam of thy light. Thou art infinitely greater than we are in all the 
excellencies which make our households seem dear to us. Thy mercies 
outrun ours past all conception. Thy faithfulness, all that thou art 
willing to bear and to do, thy patience, thy loving-kindness, and thy 
tender mercies — these transcend the imagination of man. Where 
shall we find in imperfect human beings anything that can compare 
with the grandeur, and perfectness, and purity, and depth, and sweet- 
ness of an infinite Being? Thou art loving; and all the heavens do 
know it. Thou art pouring abroad the divine beneficence throughout 
all the earth. Thou art filling every generation with light and 
warmth. Thou art sending forth all the influences of nature. They 
are thy messengers. Thou art impleting the universe with thy will, 
and it serves those who are to be heirs of salvation, rearing them up 
through many trials, through much suffering, through a thousand in- 
fluences, seen or unseen, recognized or unknown. Thou art preparing 
them for that higher and better life where thou art disclosed, not as 
power nor as wisdom, but as love, including power and wisdom. 
Thou dost fill all the realm with thyself; and therefore it is light, and 
in it is eternal summer. We beseech of thee that thou wilt interpret 
to us more and more of thyself; more and more of our own experi- 
ences; more from the tasks and duties of life well done. 

Bless, we pray thee, this morning, in a special manner these dear 
children that have by their parents been offered in consecration to 

* Immediately following the baptism of children. 



188 FACT AND FANCY. 

God. And bless these parents. Give them grace to fulfill all that to- 
day they intend and promise. May they watch in all patience over 
their children. May they hear and forbear with them, being them- 
selves exemplars. May they still instruct by right-living those that 
thou hast committed to them. And may they reap joy and happiness 
for all their tears. 

May the lives and health of these little ones be precious in thy 
sight; and if any of them are to go, will the Lord prepare those who 
are thus to be smitten, that they may be able still to say, It is the 
Lord : let him do what seemeth to him good. 

We pray for all the households in this congregation; for all that 
are in darkness and trouble ; for all that are in midnight. We beseech 
of thee that thou wilt draw near to console those who are in great 
distress of mind— for sorrows come often, blinding men, as storms in 
winter; and they cannot see their way, and grow numb under their 
touch. Lord, thou dost have compassion upon those who suffer over- 
much ; and we pray that thou wilt breathe thine own Spirit into them, 
that they may understand that thou art near to them ; and when they 
caunot discern thee, still may they wait until faith itself shall have 
resurrection in their nearts. 

We pray that thou wilt be near to those who are sick, and to 
those who are heartsick in view of the things which are to come 
upon their well-beloved. May the Lord be gracious to them, and 
reveal himself to them. May he prepare the departing to go, and 
those that remain to tarry; and may both those that go and those 
that stay, those that rejoice and those that suffer, be in the Spirit of 
the Lord, and in the full fruition of faith, discerning things that are 
yet to come. May they have power given them yet to believe that 
all things are overruled for good ; that all events are in thy hands. 
And so we pray that they may strengthen themselves, and may be 
lifted up continually. 

We pray that thou wilt be near to all who feel the burden of life; 
to all who find the cares of this world heavy; to all who are chafed 
and worried by their daily duties. Give them strength of body, and 
clearness of understanding, and patience, until the battle shall end, 
and victory be achieved. 

We pray, O Lord our God, that every one of us may behold the 
life that now is, and all its visible realities, with gratitude, and yet 
stand upon them as merely a road leading to the other life, which 
is more real. This life is for the senses : that is for the spirit. This 
is for the flesh that perishes : that is for the immortal soul which "ts 
imperishable. This passes: that abides. And grant, we pray thee, 
that all thy dealings with us in this mortal state may more and more 
draw us toward the real and invisible life. 

Bless, we pray thee, all who differ from us. Bless all who worship 
to-day, though they be not of our name, and though they hold the 
truth f ragmen tar ily. Who are we, that hold it also as in the twilight, 
that we should arrogate authority over them, or do despite to them? 
O Lord our God, we pray that thou wilt have compassion upon all 
who are trying to believe right and to live right. Have compassion 
upon all those who are crying out to thee, though they may not know 



FACT AND FANCY. 189 

how to pronounce well thy name. May all uncharitableness and un- 
kindness one toward another be put away from them, and may they 
be bound together in the common sympathy which they have in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Sufferer, who gave his life as a ransom for his 
enemies. 

We pray that thou wilt bless every effort which is made for the 
diffusion of knowledge. Bless our schools and colleges and seminaries 
of learning. Bless alJ the efforts which are made to disseminate in- 
struction among the extremely ignorant. Build up in intelligence all 
those who have newly come to their liberty. May the love of Christ 
make them free inwardly. 

Lift the light, we beseech of thee, upon all who are lying low 
and groveling in the dust, that they may become strong, and that 
by faith in thee they may achieve all those victories which by un- 
aided nature they cannot have. Let the world come, at last, towards 
its ripeness. More and more may the nations learn to love and obey 
thee. And finally may it be proclaimed upon earth, and everywhere, 
that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and may he reign from the rising of 
the sun until the going down of the same. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. 
Amen. 



-^© »- 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Otjr Father, we pray for thy blessing to rest upon the word which 
has been spoken. May none misinterpret it and be misled. May there 
grow up in every heart a sovereign desire to be at one with God. 
And if any find the warfare which is going on within them to be 
greater than they can endure, thou Burden-bearer of the universe, 
put underneath them thine own strength. Thou Holy Ghost, that 
canst develop the hidden power of the soul, breathe upon all troubled, 
struggling, striving spirits. Bring near to us a sense of the shortness 
of this life. It is but a hand's breadth. It is only a vapor. It passes 
quickly. It appeareth but for a little time, and then is ended. It is 
but just begun before it is finished. Therefore teach us that we are 
to live, not for that which is here, but for that which is to come. 
Bring us near to the great hereafter — to its rest, and to its peace, and 
to its joys. As thou hast put us here, O thou God of infinite com- 
passion and love, take every weary soul up into thine arms. Lay 
thine hand upon us and bless us. And may there be multitudes that 
shall turn from this benediction to make known to those who are 
round about them what the Lord hath done for them. And to thy 
name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. 



CUBA, AND THE BROTHERHOOD 
OF NATIONS. 



CUBA, AND THE BROTHERHOOD 
OE NATIONS. 



•* There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, 
there is neither male nor female : for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." — 
Gal. iii. 28. 



How splendidly the old Jewish feeling comes out in that 
third chapter of Galatians. 

Paul stood in Athens a veritable Jew. The temples glis- 
tened on every side of him. The streets were lined with 
statues, a single one of which is the envy of modern nations. 
But through all these the moral element broke ; and that 
which occupied the apostle's attention was the preaching of 
the true Jehovah, who dwelt not in any temple ; who could 
not be worshiped by men's hands bringing various offerings 
into the temple ; who was not a God • of gold, or silver, or 
precious stones, or ivory, or marble, or what not, but a God 
who made all these things, and who united the whole human 
race under him into one great brotherhood. 

This was the apostle's thought, and this is essentially 
his annunciation here — the substantial unity of the human 
family. God's kingdom — that is, the ideal mankind, looked 
at in the light and under the influence of Jesus Christ — is 
not divided up by artificial lines, but is an absolute united 
brotherhood. From the spiritual plane, looking down upon 
the human race, it is one great family ; and as God is the 
Father, the whole race is his house hold ; and all the diverse 
scattered elements of the human family are, after all, inte- 

Sunday Evening, November 16, 1873. Lesson : Matt, v 1-14. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nos. 725, 1008, 1001. 



194 CUBA, AND THE 

riorly grouped together, in the eye of God and of his provi- 
dence, as one great unity, one vast brotherhood. 

This truth, which in our time is becoming so much in- 
sisted upon, is not a vague sentiment. Still less is it senti- 
mentality. The brotherhood of the race of mankind rests on 
well denned ideas. It has a substratum. . It has most im- 
portant relations and uses. The essential likeness of all the 
races on earth indicates their unity. 

There are but two views which science propounds. One 
is that the race is an extension of the lower animal kingdom, 
and that by successive evolutions the present estate of man- 
kind was at last developed from lower conditions. If you look 
at the race upon earth from that point of view, it is ab- 
solutely incredible that there should have been five, six, or 
seven successive evolutions resulting in races all laaving sub- 
stantially the same departmental faculties ; all having ani- 
mal inclinations alike ; all having social affections in near 
analogy — homologous ; and all having intellectual and moral 
faculties in close resemblance. I cannot believe that there 
ever has been an evolution that five times stumbled into the 
production of the same sort of animal. That is a theory 
which draws too strongly upon our credulity. 

If the school of Agassiz are correct, who hold that there 
have been five distinct typical creations of men — I do not be- 
lieve that to be true, but assuming that there have been five 
such creations — then they are creations in which the sub- 
stratum, the great leading features, are the same. According 
to observation and the deductions of fact, there has been sub- 
stantially the same idea expressed in them all. The same pecu- 
liarities are found in each of them. There are variations in 
their structure and their proportions ; some nations have 
more of the intellectual element and others have more of the 
moral element ; but then, they are not separated one from an- 
other. Whichever view you take from the standpoint of 
science — whether you take the view that men are absolutely 
created by an instantaneous fiat at a given period, or 
that creation has been a thing of slow development — 
all the nations of the globe are substantially the same. 
They express in their organization substantially the same 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 195 

idea. And it seems to me that every fair-minded man 
must come to the conclusion that the race, which covers the 
globe with all its variations and degrees in animal economy 
and in structure of body, is organized with but small dif- 
ferences — with differences so minute that it requires the most 
expert eye and .the most trained judgment to detect and 
specify them. They are substantially the same in the great 
preservatory and defensory faculties ; and they are substan- 
tially the same in their appetites ; they are substantially the 
same in their affections ; they are substantially the same in 
the development of the lower forms of feeling, and the 
higher forms of moral sentiment ; they are substantially the 
same in the generic play of the understanding or the intel- 
lect, whatever may be their physical differences. So that the 
great outlying races, grouped together with all their varia- 
tions and conditions, are at agreement in a thousand points 
more than they are at disagreement. They are substantially 
one everywhere. Throughout all the races upon earth love is 
the same at the root ; pride and vanity are the same at the 
root ; ambition and avarice are the same at the root ; and so 
are aspiration and faith. In the most savage, in the semi- 
civilized, in the civilized, and in the Christianized man ; 
among the old pagans and the new pagans ; amidst Christians 
of the earlier day and of the later day, differences prevail ; 
but I think no one who has not a theory to support can doubt 
the substantial unity of the human family. The respects in 
which men differ are fewer and less important than the re- 
spects in which they agree and are alike. 

Men are alike, also, in the grand necessities which rest 
upon them. All their temptations and weaknesses are sub- 
stantially alike. They must needs be so ; for they are under 
substantially the same laws of organization, and essentially 
the same problem is everywhere to be evolved in human life, 
in mortal conditions. Men may differ in detail, on occasion, 
and in degree, but they are substantially alike. 

The struggles by which all the world rises above its animal 
conditions, and works itself into civilization and into a spir- 
itual and Christian state — these join men together. Their 
common enemies are ignorance, ambition, and sordid avarice. 



196 CUBA, AND THE 

Lusts and appetites act in the same way everywhere, causing 
the same kinds of suffering, demanding the same exertions, 
and being overcome by the same instruments which lead to 
the same victories. 

This general view of the brotherhood of man is one of the 
most important doctrines that can be taught, and it grows 
more and more important as the scope and facility of inter- 
course increase. As strong nations are brought face to face 
with weak ones ; as commerce excites selfish instincts together 
with more generous ones, among the nations of the earth; 
as great inventions and improvements from science and the 
mechanic arts bring the world into an incomparably smaller 
space than it used to occupy ; as the utmost bounds of the 
globe come nearer together than neighborhoods once were ; as 
the circulation of thought and action is accelerated so that 
the earth is scarcely any longer divided and separated, but is 
brought into unitary conditions — conditions exciting ani- 
mosity and rebellion, or sympathy and help — &s these things 
take place, it becomes important that men should feel those 
great affections which spring from the consciousnesss of a 
common hope in Jesus Christ, of common suffering in a sin- 
ful world among sinful men, of common experience, of com- 
mon wants and of common interests. This community of 
feeling among men because they are brethren we need more 
at the present day than we have needed it at any former 
period, although the world has in every age groaned and tra- 
vailed in pain for the want of it. 

This brotherhood of man does not mean, of course, abso- 
solute equality, nor desert absolutely alike. It is entirely 
consistent with the doctrine of inferiors and superiors — with 
the relative superiority which belongs to power, and the rela- 
tive inferiority which belongs to the want of power. Because 
some are high, and because they are relatively superior, it 
does not necessarily follow that they are separated from those 
who are inferior to them by reason of demerit or weakness or 
sin. The glory of the household is the strength of the 
strong and the weakness .of the weak. There is nothing 
in the household so strong as the weakness of the cradle. 
There is nothing in the household so reverend as the weak- 



BROTHERHOOD OF NA TI0N8. 197 

ness of the venerable father or mother that sits trembling in 
the chair. To the one extreme or the other of weakness, all 
strength, all virtue, and all manliness bow. And in the hu- 
man race there should be the enlisting of strength in behalf 
of weakness. The power of knowledge, of refinement, of 
culture, of the arts, etc., in a strong race, are so many over- 
tures of generous bounty, so many means of beneficence, so 
many filaments of union, by which the weak are to be bound 
to the strong. The welfare of the whole is to be sought by 
the whole. 

There may, therefore, be relative subordination. The 
larger being must outweigh the less. "We cannot contravene 
the law of fact. The large thinker must take precedence of 
the small thinker. The large heart must have more power 
than the small heart. No equality is meant. An absolute 
brotherhood is quite consistent with subordination, with rela- 
tive position, the high being high without detriment to the 
low, or rather the high being almoners of God's bounty to 
the low. The attempt to level all men to an absolute 
equality, whether of bodily, mental, moral, or political and 
secular, conditions, is a madman's attempt. There is no such 
thing, and there can be no such thing. 

If there should be rebellion in the fields, and the grass 
should be jealous of the forests, and should say to the pines, 
and hemlocks, and beeches, and birches, and maples, and 
oaks, and hickories, " Bring down those high heads of yours," 
it would not make ijie grass grow any higher. Grass is grass, 
and trees are trees ; and no amount of railing on the part of 
the one will make it equal to the others. 

And if poor men should attempt to make equality, and 
should say, "The rich aristocratic men shall be what we are," 
it might be possible that destruction would tumble down the 
top ; but no destruction of the top is going to lift up the 
bottom. If men are weak because they are ignorant, no rail- 
ing can make them strong. There is no way in which the 
bottom can go up except as the top goes up — by brain-power, 
in the right spot, at the top of the head and not at the bot- 
tom. Clamor and mischief -making will only result in clamor 
and mischief -making. The sun will not rise one minute 



198 CUBA, AND THE 

earlier because any man wants it to. The stars will not wheel 
out anywhere to help the mariner. Things are as they are ; 
we cannot change them ; and we must shape our course ac- 
cordingly. JSTo man can make ten tons in one scale go 
up by courtesy when one ton is put in the other scale; for one 
ton always weighs down one ton, and only one ; because 
God's decree is in it. And it is 'so in moral and social things. 
The brotherhood of men does not imply any notions of equal- 
ity, either actual or possible. It is not probable that there 
ever will be equality. To the end of the world there will be 
gradations. They are inherent in human conditions, not 
only, but they are occasions of reciprocal service and kind- 
ness, which are a part of that economy out of which may grow 
infinite comfort to the whole. 

I remark, first, that this brotherhood implies that every 
gradation should be inspired with sympathy and with a true 
benevolence for every other. All society is a unit. If a part 
suffer all suffer in turn, directly or indirectly, sooner or later. 
The welfare of the top and of the middle and of the bottom 
are identical. That which is good for the higher rains down 
benefits for all that are below them ; and that which is good 
for the lowest brings by its influence benefits to the highest. 
That which is good for my head is good for my feet ; and 
that which is bad for my feet is bad for my head. That 
which is good or bad for my right hand is good or bad for my 
left hand. You cannot give paralysis to one side and have 
the other side go on its way rejoicing. And if one portion of 
the human family suffer, the whole human family suffer. 
More and more is this so, as their intercourse grows facile and 
universal and rapid, and becomes multitudinous in its effects. 
More and more the unity of the human family requires that 
there shall be common sympathy, common consultation and 
common wisdom for the whole. Wrong done to any part is 
wrong done to every part ; and right done to any part is right 
done to all parts. 

Secondly, the welfare of all the members of the family of 
mankind — the poorest, the most ignorant, the oppressed by 
labor — concerns every honest and Christian man. There is 
no possibility of developing the true Christian spirit in such 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 199 

a way as that a man«shall not care for his fellow-men ; and 
in proportion as men lift themselves above common want, if 
they have the spirit of true religion they become sympathetic, 
and go down to those who are their inferiors and are most in 
need of them. 

Now, I advocate no promiscuous charity ; I advocate no 
false theories of government or of political economy ; I advo- 
cate what I regard to be necessary and indispensable to the 
welfare of men. 

There is a great movement among the working people of 
the globe. All Europe is astir to-day. If the interior agita- 
tion seems not able to burst the crust, and work up into 
mighty forces, it is only a question of time. The great mul- 
titude of working men are to be heeded. We are coming 
upon a new era. There is to be development. And it is all- 
important that we should know the lines along which it is going 
to take place. I hold that it is not going to take place by any 
external arrangements ; and that it is not going to take place 
by decrees of government which shall equalize revenues, 
and slice off the heads of those who get too high, thus bring- 
ing all upon a common level. I believe that men will 
come up as individuals to all the amenities of manhood. 
Communities and nations are to be developed by the devel- 
opment of men, and not by the enactments of legislation. 
Legislation may do some things : it may remove some 
obstacles ; it may facilitate progress ; but after all, the 
indispensable condition by which the great mass of working 
men, at home and abroad, are to acquire place, and ease, 
and comfort, is that they shall be trained and cultured. 
For a man in this world is what his brain makes him. 
A man whose brain puts him alongside of the ox may low till 
the judgment day, but he will not be more than an ox. A 
man whose brain puts him by the side of the ass will stand 
there as long as his brain fixes him to that brotherhood. He 
that would go up must go up by the elevation of his being. 
It is being that makes rank and condition, substantially. 
Artificial conditions may temporarily exist with more or less 
power and influence ; but all the great natural causes which 
are making the growths of society turn on this interior con- 



200 CUBA, AND THE 

dition — the amount of brain, what part of the head it is 
located in, and what degree of culture has been given to it. 

I am a working man, and the son of a working man. All 
the blood in these veins came from men who were mechanics. 
I am not ashamed of it, nor am I proud of it. It is just as 
good as any other blood, and not any better. In so far as I 
am on a higher plane of work and pleasure than the mere 
physical laborer, I am what I am, by the grace of God, 
simply through culture. In my fathers and in their fathers 
was rolled over to me my portion, and that which I have, I 
got from tilling my little garden-patch here. It is simply 
what a man has in him, and where it is, that determines 
what he is. 

Now, preaching to the working classes the injustice of 
wealth and the oppression of capital is not what is wanted. 
Of course, there are some injustices of wealth, and there are 
some oppressions of capital ; but I should like to know what 
part of the earth-machine goes yet without squeaking. I 
should like to know where, in this clumsy thing that we call 
the world, there is any arrangement fitted so exactly that the 
joints do not grind and rub. There is conflict in the conditions 
of society to-day ; and the only way of relief is to make men 
more. Are races oppressed ? It is because there is not 
enough to them. Fill them up interiorly, and you cannot op- 
press them. You cannot oppress a man when you have 
made him large enough. It is not possible to make slaves of 
men who are plenary in the brain. The strong dominate the 
weak generically, universally, simply because the strong are 
the men who have the most brains and the most brain- 
power. 

If, then, you would right the wrong, right it by dissipat- 
ing ignorance ; right it by dispelling vice, waste, indolence, 
and crimes against a man's own self. Teach men self-respect 
and discipline. Give them more thought-force, more skill, 
more energy — not fewer hours, but more hours ; not less 
work, but more work ; not privilege, but power ! power ! 
powee ! Then men will come up without any " Thank you." 

From this general doctrine of brotherhood, so applied, I 
proceed, thirdly, to say that the interest of every nation on 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 201 

the globe is the vital concern of every other nation. The 
time has come when every nation can concern itself with the 
interest of every other nation, and when this ought to 
be done, — at any rate, by the enlightened and Chris- 
tianized nations of the globe. Statesmanship has no right 
any longer to be selfish. I hold that every man acting among 
his friends, and in his personal relations, is less than a man 
by so much as he is selfish. Public sentiment demands that 
men among their neighbors and fellows should act on a larger 
plane than selfish instinct. That is what we mean by po- 
liteness, generosity and nobility, carried into social inter- 
course. We hold it to be so in neighborhoods. This is the 
basis on which households associate. And in nations, now, 
with their interlaced questions of interest, we must hold that 
the public weal is to be first, and that the private weal is to be 
considered afterwards, and to be merged in that, and made 
consistent with it. We have, in an imperfect way, carried 
the principle of vital concern, each for each, to where nation 
dwells with nation ; and there it almost stops to-day ; and, 
as hitherto, nations mostly ask, "What is our interest ?" and 
say, •*' We will look after our own welfare, and will let other 
people take care of theirs." But the day must come when 
England, when France, when Germany, when Spain, when 
Italy, when America, when every enlightened nation, far 
away and near at hand, shall study one another's interest. 
This principle is cosmopolitan, and I think the day is draw- 
ing near when it will be put in practice. 

Fourthly, the relation of civilization, of humanity, and of 
the Christian religion to foreign nations is one of the most 
noble of relations. To bear to others that elevation which 
has leavened the whole lump among us ; to give to others 
that light which has made us the children of light ; to carry 
to men the seeds of civilization, gathered from our own 
abundant harvest-fields — this is not a work of mere sentimen- 
tality : it is a work worthy of man in his noblest aspects and 
ideals. 

This part of missions has been railed against and 
measured in a manner that surprises me, when I con- 
sider who they are that rail against it. Calculation has 



202 CUBA, AND THE 

been made of how much money it costs per head to con- 
vert the heathen, and of what could have been done with 
the money expended in converting them. There was a 
case of that kind some two thousand years ago, when a 
heart surcharged with love and gratitude brought an alabas- 
ter box into the presence of the divine Personage, anob broke 
it, and poured the contents on his head, filling the house with 
its odor. There was an economist there who said, "What 
is all this waste for? The ointment might have been sold for 
three hundred pence, and given to the poor." Gratitude was 
nothing to him. The magnitude and the glory of squander- 
ing every lower value for the sake of giving the heart an op- 
portunity to express itself had no charm with this critic. It 
was Judas who said, " Do not squander the ointment on Jesus ; 
sell it, and make money." It is a bad, suicidal precedent for 
men to stand and say, "Do not squander money in carrying 
the knowledge of salvation to all the creatures on the globe. 
You have faith, you have love, you have sympathy, you have 
knowledge — do not break the alabaster box, and pour out 
these precious commodities for the conversion of the heathen; 
it will cost forty thousand dollars a head if you do !" They 
tell us that missions are not only expensive and extravagant, 
but needless. 

Now, I think no thought more sublime ever entered the 
heart of man, than the thought that the field is the world, and 
that all men are our brethren, which has led to civilization, 
and touched the Christian with a desire to carry religion to 
all the world. We do not measure the gifts and graces of the 
spirit by any commercial standard. 

Suppose a man should come into my household, and say, 
" A charming little child that is. What do you take its value 
to be ? Is it worth five hundred ?" I would spew him out of 
my house ! The idea of measuring the worth of a heart, of 
a soul, or of. a father's love, by dollars ! The man could not 
hold his face up, unless it was a clumsy and awkward jest. 

And yet, here are men who are attempting to measure 
faith in God, the enthusiasm of piety, by a pecuniary, com- 
mercial standard. Shame on them ! It is one of the things 
that irradiate the charity of man. It is true that we have sent 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 203 

rum, it is true that we have sent arms and ammunition, to 
the heathen, which have been the destruction of many — God 
forgive us ! But we have done some other things : we have 
sent abroad many heroic men, who counted not their lives 
dear and spent them in serving those who were plunged in 
heathen darkness. We have contributed not only the wealth 
that God has given us, but our sons and daughters, and 
many devoted men and women their own lives, not for some 
object which stood before our eyes, and appealed to our 
senses, but for the benefit of those whom we never saw, and 
whom we knew we never should see, and from whom we did 
not expect to derive any advantage. The offering is the 
purest, the nearest disinterested, of anything that transpires 
among men. 

I remark, once more, that the cultivation of national amen- 
ities — patience, manliness, non-boasting, avoidance of odious 
comparisons, slowness to anger, all elements which tend to 
promote a high-toned Christianity — ought to prevail among 
the nations, by reason of their common relations to each other, 
from what they are, from what they suffer, from what they 
aspire to as children of God and heirs of eternity. These 
considerations ought to unite men so that national intercourse 
should be established on the highest plane. The nations 
ought to turn the angel and not the animal side toward each 
other. They ought to be long-suffering and full of kindness 
one toward another. 

Under such circumstances, how natural it is for me to 
say, next, that every man who believes in the brotherhood of 
man, and in the development and on-going of the whole 
human family on that plane which Christianity has marked 
out, should pray and labor for the destruction of those things 
which lead to war, and for the destruction of war itself ! If 
war must prevail — and it must yet for a time — let every good 
man seek to reduce it to the point of pure executive justice. 
Take it out of the hands of hatred ; take it out of the hands 
of prejudice and animosity ; take it out of the hands of greed 
and lust and ambition ; and put it into the hands of justice, 
clear, cool, deliberate. Let war be among nations what the 
police and magisterial administrations are in municipal bodies. 



204 CUBA AND THE 

The extent of this feeling of war in the race is something 
appalling. Whatever man came from, (whence he came is 
the question and the puzzle of the present) there can be no 
doubt as to what he brought with him. Men have brought 
brute instincts and appetites and bestial tendencies from their 
ancestry. There is in man as much love of blood as in the tiger 
or in the lion. There is among men just as sturdy a cruelty 
and just as persistent a use of strength as among bears. There 
is the eagle, the tiger, the lion, the bear, the serpent, yet, in 
human nature; and the extent to which war exhibits the 
destroying instinct among the races of the world is appall- 
ing. 

Twenty years ago I thought that we had done — that there 
had dawned upon us the era of peace ; and with the enthusi- 
asm of youth I proclaimed it. Since that time there have 
been the Crimean war, the Franco-Italian war with Austria, 
the Prussian and Austrian war, our own great civil war, 
and the war between Germany and France. These ter- 
rific conflagrations of the human race, than which there 
never were larger or more destroying ones, have all taken 
place within a score of years. Is the world ripe for peace ? 
Do nations need no lessons 2 Does Christianity exert its 
legitimate influence ? Is public sentiment corrected on these 
subjects ? The spirit has not died out to-day. There never 
was a time when there was so much iron dug for cannon as 
to-day. Never was there a time when so many forges were 
going, for the manufacture of arms of destruction as to-day. 

Do you know that the mountain which crushes industry 
throughout the civilized globe is the mountain of war-Debt ? 
England has a war-debt of about four thousand millions of 
dollars ; we have our war-debt of some twenty-two hundred 
millions ; France has hers of thousands of millions ; Austria 
has hers ; Prussia has hers ; Italy has hers ; and the minor 
States of Europe have theirs. These various war-debts com- 
bined amount to twenty-one thousand millions of dollars; 
and the nations owing this money have nothing to show for 
it ; and the industry of the multitudes of laboring people 
throughout the globe is taxed to pay it. 

There is no other outrage to-day so great as the spirit of 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 205 

war which yet rages among mankind ; and if men are broth- 
ers one can hardly believe it in the face of the existing state 
of facts. Is it not time that men should be reconciled, if they 
are brothers ? If there is such a thing as a common family 
of the race, and they are united together by great natural 
ties, is it not time that men should rouse themselves to some 
sense of their duty in the matter of peace ? 

We come to this question with more interest to-day be- 
cause the hearts of our whole people are hot with a sense of 
the wrong and cruelty which have taken place near to our 
borders. There can be no question of the horrible atrocity of 
the deeds just perpetrated in Cuba upon the crew and passen- 
gers of the captured steamer Virginius. If they had been 
done in the heat of battle, upon a foe overcome, that would 
have been an outrage ; but on deliberation, day after day, the 
shooting down of the crew and of the passengers, band by band, 
was slaughter infamous and without palliation. It was not 
fear that led to the destroying of these men ; it was not the 
necessity of self-preservation : it was the cruel love of blood ; 
it was simple ferocity. It is as bad a thing as has happened 
in our day ; and it concerns every man on the globe. If such 
things as these may be done and permitted, then civilization 
must drift backward ; then public sentiment, that affects the 
globe, is a nullity ; then the devil incarnate is far stronger 
yet upon earth than Christ, in the souls of men. 

There are deeds, good and bad, which rise above locality, 
and touch universal human nature. Heroism, for instance, 
is one of those elements which can never be cabined or con- 
fined. 

During our great struggle, a band of soldiers were in a 
boat, near an ambush, in a creek. They had run ashore ; 
and as the fire was severe, they threw themselves into the 
bottom of the boat ; and there they lay, and were subject to 
inevitable slaughter. There was but one black man among 
them. He, surveying the position, said, simply and calmly, 
" Somebody must die for the sake of the others"; and he 
got out of the boat, and put his shoulder to the bow, and 
shoved her off into the stream, and fell into the water him- 
self pierced with a score of bullets. His name is not known ; 



206 CUBA AND THE 

bnt that; is a deed of heroism which belongs neither to the 
South, nor to the North, nor to America, but to mankind ; 
and the poorer the man, the lower his station, the nobler is 
such god-like self-sacrifice as this. 

So, also, deeds of horror do not belong to the place where 
they are executed, nor to the nation or race from which they 
sprang. No law, no line, no limit can confine them. 

This deed is a crime against human nature, done, not by 
banditti, or roving savages, but by organized men, under 
pretence of government ; and the blood which has been 
spilled, is blood, every drop of it, which cries out to God. 

Not in the anguish of our terrible conflict, thanks be to 
God, did this nation ever perpetrate one deliberate act of 
cruelty. When that great war, in which a million men stood 
arrayed on both sides, and in which the fiercest passions were 
kindled, had ceased, not one single man was slain as a penalty 
for treason — not one single man for any other cause than for 
crimes committed ; and I count that to be a glory on our 
arms greater than all the trophies and achievements of our 
soldiery. There were emissaries sent: among us with poi- 
soned clothes of infection ; there were men sent with torches 
to fire our cities ; and yet, even under such provocation, there 
was no cruelty, thanks be to God ! 

This great atrocity throws light upon those oppressors 
against whom the prostrate Cubans have been struggling. 
We have been inclining, in recent months, almost to forget 
those interior .men who are striving against the government 
which they declare grinds them to powder, and is unworthy 
of support. This monstrous crime indicates what the condi- 
tion of things is in that island, and shows against what ele- 
ments the Cubans are in revolt. These men, banded to- 
gether in suffering and heroic purpose, no matter what faults 
and misfortunes they may have, need liberty ; they need re- 
lief ; they need sympathy. A handful, are they ? Poor, are 
they ? Not significant, are they ? All the more, then, they 
need us. 

When Washington lay in camp in winter at Valley Forge, 
with his starved and ragged tatterdemalions, whose short 
marches might have been tracked by the blood of his soldiers' 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 207 

feet — was he not then more glorious than when he had accom- 
plished victory, and had sheathed his sword ? It was in his 
hour of darkness and weakness that he found the hour of 
heroism. Tell me not that they are poor, and that they are 
few, and that they have only struggled in vain. They de- 
serve liberty, and the help of every honest heart on the 
globe to achieve it. 

There can be no doubt, then, as to the duty of moral sup- 
port. • Every man should pray for it in behalf of these men 
who are seeking for their rights. Every man should be en- 
thusiastic for them. Every man should long to see over- 
thrown that armed cruelty which pretends to be government. 

It is the duty of the government, it is the duty of the 
people acting through their organs of government, to do 
whatever can be done with propriety in this matter. They 
are not rashly to be driven by the irresponsible cries of the 
community. Deeply as I feel, much as I sympathize with 
this cause, much as I have sympathized with it from the very 
first, openly and privately, I say that it is the duty of this 
Government not rashly to be driven by the irresponsible cries 
of the community at large, whose impulses may be right, 
while their measures may be wrong. It is the duty of this 
Government to act, not simply with reference to the deed 
itself, and its merits : they are bound to act with a considera- 
tion of what this nation is, and of what its relations are to 
all other nations, and to the cause of liberty everywhere. 

America is an example, and ought to be. She ought to 
give laws, not arbitrarily, but by a noble example, through 
the willing public sentiment of the globe. She ought to de- 
cree such wise things and such right things that she shall be 
considered a leader to the free nations of the earth. She has 
peculiar relations. She is the herald and leader of a new era. 
The seed ripened on our mother soil has been given to us to 
plant in this larger sphere; and here have rolled out and 
opened up those noble and generous ideas of our fathers, into 
their fullest form and significance and power ; and we are 
intrusted with them, not for our own pride and boasting, but 
as advanced to carry the banner for the human race. We are 
not to seek the gratification of a moment's indignation, but 



208 CUBA AND THE 

to ask what will give the world most confidence in the wis- 
dom, impartiality, justice and kindness of the freest nation — 
or that which boasts itself as being the freest — on the globe. 

We are to consider, also, in the present case, noi the 
cause of justice in that island alone, but the cause of civiliza- 
tion, of progress, of free government, there, and in all the 
world besides. Such a nation as ours set upon a hill cannot 
be hid ; and its actions cannot have single relations. Like 
a lighted torch it rays out in every direction. 

Spain has been the victor and the victim of ages. It has 
been a land full of noble natures and ignominious actions — a 
land full of noble impulses and debasing passions. Here it 
was that the sun stood still, not as when Joshua would slay 
the heathen, but until the people were prepared to be plunged 
into a night seemingly without a sunrise. That great nation 
is now feeling the call of God. The touch of his providence 
is calling her to arise ; and as Lazarus, who heard the call of 
his Master, came forth in his cerements, with a napkin about 
his head, and staggered and stumbled, he knew not why nor 
where, until the Master said, (i Loose him, unbind him;" 
so Spain, bound about with the old bandages of oppression, 
staggers in her path, and cannot walk straightly yet. Let us 
remember her. The sympathy of every lover of his kind 
stands to-day with Oastelar and a republican government in 
Spain, because they prophesy self-government, intelligence, a 
freer religion, and a nobler manhood. 

Now, if we can reach the ends of justice through the bet- 
ter men of Spain ; if we can punish the monsters bred in 
Cuba, and vindicate the sanctity of justice and humanity, in 
such a way as shall make republican government honorable, 
and strengthen the hands of the true patriots of old Spain, 
then in the name of liberty let us so inflict justice that it 
shall punish the guilty, but strengthen the hands of men who 
long to do better. 

But if it shall be found that the government of Cuba has 
insulted the American flag, and that the responsible Spanish 
Government will not or cannot make due reparation, that it 
has violated the laws of nations and the sense of humanity 
and that the responsible Spanish Government cannot put 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 209 

a stop to such abominations as are a stench to creation, then 
let the hand of justice fall, not alone to punish miscreants, 
but to rear up and put in power, upon that sad and beauti- 
ful island, those who seek the welfare of all, and the liberty 
of all, so as to give safety, knowledge and freedom to that 
long-darkened region. If the sword and the fire are to be 
sent, send them, if it be possible, so that they shall punish 
first, and then cut the bonds of oppression, and burn down 
the dens of infamy. And let it not be passion nor the wild 
riot of unregulated enthusiasm in the public soul that does it. 
May we remember that they are our brothers — the sinners 
and the sinned against ; and whatever we do, let us do it in 
the Spirit of God, for the welfare of the race, with delibera- 
tion, without cruelty, punishing so that the causes of 
offense henceforth shall be removed, and disturb the nations 
no more. 

Let America bind up wounds — not make them ; quench 
the fires of war — not kindle them ! But if God shall put 
into our hands the cup, bitter and fierce, that shall be poured 
out as a medicine to the nations, may that hand reach forth 
from a kindly heart, and may it be a medicine administered 
by love and kindness, though it be stern kindness and love, 
and not in fury, in wrath, or in revenge. 



210 CUBA AND THE 



PEAYEK BEFOKE THE SERMON". 

We rejoice in thee, our Father ; we rejoice in all the mercies which 
thou hast vouchsafed to us through Jesus Christ our Lord ; we rejoice 
in the manifestation of thyself in the world which thou hast created ; 
we rejoice in all the signs of thy power and of thy Godhead; we re- 
joice in the truths which have been made known to us from age to 
age, as holy men, being moved by thy Spirit, spake the long record 
of righteousness ; but we rejoice above all in that revelation which 
thou hast made of thine own interior nature— of that great realm of 
all-subduing love wherein is the heart of God. We rejoice that, not 
by the thunder of thy power, not by lightnings that burn, not by 
wrath nor by f ear, art thou endeavoring to restore men, or to bring 
them up from their low estate. Thou art shining as the summer sun 
shines. Thou art the Sun of righteousness. Morning, noon and night 
thou art pouring out from thine own nature all those affections which 
enkindle joy in the household, and all those nobilities which enlarge 
the sphere of human life. All that we behold in each other of good- 
ness is brought forth by thy touch. All that is admirable in man is 
significant, not so much of what it is as of what thou art, with whom 
all nobleness is transcendently greater than we know; with whom 
love is purer, and mercy is larger in its beneficence, than we can now 
imagine. For with us the best things are narrow, and poor, and selfish. 
If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more must 
our Father know how to give good gifts, who is neither narrow nor 
selfish nor veined with evil ; who is infinite in excellence, transcendent 
in power, God over all, blessed forever. And though we cannot by 
searching And thee out, nor with our thoughts run through the cir- 
cuit of thy being, so much larger art thou than our power of com- 
prehension; though we leave a great deal to the revelation of the 
future when we shall be purified, and our eye shall be purged from 
all dimness and evil, yet we know enough to draw our hearts in con- 
fidence to thee. Thou hast been our sustaining God in times gone by ; 
and thou art still a present help in time of trouble. We rejoice in 
thee more than in self, more than in friends, and more than in power. 
This is our joy and our glory, that the Lord is with us. We walk by 
faith of the invisible; and we pray that thou wilt grant that this 
faith may be a strong staff to every one who feels conscious of his 
weakness. Minister to each soul to-night the greatest gift in thy 
power. Stir in every heart divine thought. Awaken in every soul 
an aspiration for communion with thee. Bring near every one to 
thyself. And as thou dost minister thyself unto thy children, may 
they feel how strange is the power which thou dost evoke from the 
human soul. More and more may we be wrought into the image of 
our Saviour. More and more may we find our sonship developed. 
May our affection as sons of God, and our consciousness of adoption, 
grow apace, so that more and more we may live in the joys of thy 
salvation. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing especially to those who 
are in trouble — to all who are in darkness ; to all who are suffering 
from bereavement ; to all who are homesick and heartsick for any 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 211 

reason ; to all the children of sorrow. Bring stars into their night, 
thou that didst cause the star to hover over the Child that was born. 
Bring to them the knowledge of the Saviour, sympathizing with and 
succoring and strengthening them. We pray that thou wilt keep thy 
servants who are in the midst of life's duties from despondencies, 
from immoderation of desire, and from all wrong motives or courses. 
May they seek the right things in the right way, and by the right 
instruments, and more and more show that they are victorious over 
the world. 

Grant, we pray thee, to all those who desire knowledge, the secret 
knowledge that is in thee. We pray that thou wilt inspire every one 
with a desire for a noble manhood. More and more may the pattern 
that is in Christ Jesus become the model of our imitation. So may we 
live in the midst of the world without abusing it, and without being 
ourselves destroyed by it. 

We pray that thou wilt bless this whole nation. We desire for it, 
not outward wealth alone, nor unity of counsel, nor power by land 
and sea. Crown this nation with a noble glory of intelligence, of 
obedience to law, of reverence to God, of mercy toward the weak, 
and of generous and kindly feeling toward all. May it recognize its 
brotherhood with the nations of the earth everywhere. We pray that 
we may study war not at all, and peace altogether. 

And we beseech of thee, O Lord, that thou wilt inspire the nations 
of the earth with an invincible desire for peace. Break the iron rod. 
Destroy the destroyer. Cast down and burn up the spirit of destroy- 
ing war. Bring at last the nations of the earth to their intelligence, 
to their self-control, to their better nature, so that the spirit of peace 
may be breathed upon them. 

Lord, thou hast promised great things respecting the world; but 
where is the fulfillment? We look upon the mountain, and midnight 
is there. We look upon the valley, and it is dark. We look upon the 
horizon, and we see but the faintest star. But is it not the star that 
preludes the morning ? Art not thou, O Sun of righteousness, coming 
with healing in thy beams ? Arise, thou God of life, and of light, and 
of love, and of peace. Come forth from thy long hiding in the ages, 
and fulfill at length the joy of those promises which thou hast made 
respecting this world. May the new heaven and the new earth m 
which dwelleth righteousness speedily come. 

And to thy name, Father, Son and Spirit, shall be the praise, 
Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Ottr Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing 
to rest upon the word spoken, and upon the great truth which is 
above all words and all expressions. Open our hearts to thy nature, 
to thy long-suffering, to the wonder of thy kindness and mercy to- 
ward an erring race. Thou Burden-bearer, whose life is forever 
spent that we may have life; thou that dost dwell as an eternal 



212 THE BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS. 

sacrifice, grant that we may be made like unto thee, and that we may- 
seek to be first by being servants of all ; and that we may know that 
it is more blessed to give than to receive. Grant that we may not 
seek to take the highest place : may we be willing, rather, to take the 
lowest ; and we pray that we may be kept back from all those sins of 
violence, and cruelty, and rapine, and greed, and lust, and avarice, 
which have hitherto been such great temptations to the nations of the 
globe. O let the Sun of righteousness arise, and bring from the heav- 
enly place tbe sweet summer of divine love, and fill this people. If 
they must vindicate justice and rectitude, may they have the Spirit 
of God. Take away from them all cruelty, and all hate, and all 
revenge, and all selfishness, and all vainglory, and false pride, and 
make them a light and a comfort to the weak and the poor. May 
their glory be in the Lord. And to thy name shall be the praise. 
Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF 
SUFFERING. 



THE MOEAL TEACHING OF 
SUFFERING. 



" For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died 
for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die : yet 
peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But 
God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sin- 
ners, Christ died for us."— Rom. v. 6-8. 



In the opening verses of this chapter it is said that we 
" rejoice in hope of the glory of God ; and not only so, bnt 
we glory in tribulation also," bringing together the two great 
elements which move human nature — joy and sorrow. These 
twin forces have been, from the first, prime moral agencies 
in developing, educating and establishing the human race 
upon the spiritual plane. 

The Old Testament appealed more to joy as the positive 
and primitive motive than to anything else. It employed 
sorrow as a threat ; but there ran through its lyrics, its proph- 
ecies, and its formulas of worship, a mysterious element of 
suffering which then had no interpretation. Now, the New 
Testament discloses this mystery of suffering, and develops 
the germ of the Old Testament into a tree of life. It gives 
new and sublime views of the moral sphere and character of 
suffering. 

It will be for another time to consider more in detail the 
interior action of sorrow without altogether leaving out 
the matter of joy. I wish to present in chief, to-day, a 
view of suffering as an interpreter of moral truth, and as a 
great moral force acting through the imagination and the 

Suxdav Evening, November 23, 1873. Lesson: Horn. v. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nos. 269, 545, 648. 



216 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

affections. What suffering works out in its subject — that is 
to say, how far the sufferer is> himself perfected by suffer- 
ing — is one thing. What cleansing and strengthening 
power it has, what its whole influence is in enlarging the 
horizon of a man's thought, the inward drill and education 
that it brings to a man's own personality — that is a thing 
which I have often discussed, and which I do not propose to 
take up now. But what power it has on the imagination 
and on the heart of men in the world, and what its relation 
is to the making of moral truths and principles supreme 
among men — that is a question which I have not discussed, 
and which I mean to discuss to-day. 

The first step of human life, I need not say to you, is by 
the senses. It is to the life of the flesh that we are intro- 
duced by birth ; and by that is meant simply that we are 
physical, animal beings. We are born of the flesh ; we live 
by its appetites ; and the higher life is gradually developed in 
us. There is no development, for instance, of hunger. That 
comes with us. There is no development of thirst. That 
comes with us, also. The blood throbs ; and the nerves, 
though they be low in tone, and have a low function, have a 
function notwithstanding. But ideas come later. Emotions 
are superinduced upon this fleshly body and nature. And 
moral ideas and sentiments, which are highest of all, come 
latest of all. 

It is a question, by what instrument this young animal is 
taught to be something more than an animal, socially, mor- 
ally, politically and spiritually. What are the forces that are 
employed to develop the higher nature of man ? The truths 
of the higher realm come slowly, and they come with diffi- 
culty. The ideas, for instance, of positive and intentional 
kindness, of obligingness, of courtesy, of self-denial, and of 
politeness — these never come of themselves. They are all in- 
troduced. There is some regimen by which they strike into 
the little animal's mind as it begins to be susceptible. The 
conception of such qualities as these is something separable 
from mere animal sensations. It is the developing of a higher 
life than merely one which seeks the pleasure of eating and 
drinking and frolicking. 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 217 

The heroic forms of moral truths which rise still higher 
than these — truths of fidelity and ]ove and self-sacrifice and 
faith and hope — these come still later, and with yet greater 
difficulty. So great is the difficulty of developing these 
higher moral truths in the soul, that when one is brought 
under the dominion and full experience of them he is said 
to have been really born again. It is a work which is 
equivalent to being born again, because it leaves one so 
different a creature from the animal that he was when he 
began. 

Now, consider what it is in fact, in the actual experience 
of men, that most helps one forward toward the higher realm 
of moral truths. 

In the family, parents being the teachers and ministers 
of God to their children, something is gained by intellectual 
instruction ; but you can go only a little way in explaining to 
a child simply by words things which are higher than its 
development and experience. Every parent knows how slow 
and difficult a process it is to go down to the child with 
higher ideas, and put them into that child's mind, so that 
he recognizes them, and feels them to be true. It would be 
worthy of a supreme artist and dramatist to be able to pict- 
ure how conceptions which become fully developed in after 
life lie in the mind of a child — to represent what sort of pict- 
ures are made there. I have some reminiscences of my own 
in that direction, which I shall not go into, but which throw 
a great deal of light on the matter. The attempt to teach 
down on a child in such a way that it shall rise to a higher 
sphere, and to a higher line of experience, may accomplish 
something, but not a great deal. Parental example does 
more than parental teaching. 

For instance, take such truths as those of self-restraint. 
You may teach a child what restraint means, and you may 
urge upon him motives of fear, of persuasion, or of reward 
for the act itself, by a blind and mechanical process. I was 
told when I was a child that I ought to govern my temper. 
Well, I always did when I was good-natured ; and I always 
lost it when I was not. When I was in my father's and 
mother's presence, for some reason more or less cognizable 



218 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

to you all, I did restrain any great ebullition ; but it boiled 
inside. 

I recollect distinctly, on one occasion, when I was not 
more than six years old, that a man of great violence of tem- 
per came to see my father, and rated him with such a scold- 
ing as I had never heard. I looked at my lather with amaze- 
ment, as he sat perfectly still and tranquil. When the man 
had done, and felt relieved, father began, in the gentlest 
manner, to say to him, " We'll, if all you say is true, I think 
you are right in the severity of your remarks ; but I suppose 
that if in any regard you are not correct, you are willing to 
be set right." "Yes," said the man, with a growl, "of 
course I am." " Well, will you allow me to make one state- 
ment?" said father, humbling himself before the man. " Yes." 
So father began with a little matter, and stated it ; and then 
he went a little further ; and then a little further ; . until, by 
and by, the man began to lose color, and at last broke out, 
"I have been all wrong in this matter; I did not under- 
stand it." After he had gone away, father said to me, in 
a sort of casual manner, " Give up, and beat 'em." I got 
an idea of self-restraint under provocation, which I never 
conld have got by all the instruction in the world which 
came to me merely in the form of ideas, and in picture- 
forms and fables. I had before me the sight of my father 
suffering — for his pride was naturally touched (though you 
might not think it from his posterity, yet there was pride in 
my father to some extent) ; he felt it keenly ; and under the 
keenness of the feeling he still maintained perfect calmness 
and perfect sweetness. He overcame the man by suffering. 
He suffered reproach and abuse, and maintained himself 
under them. . 

How much instruction would it require to bring a man 
to a full spiritual apprehension of what is meant by return- 
ing good for evil ! But if the child sees the parent, not doing 
it dramatically for his sake, but doing it incidentally and 
unconsciously, in the thousand disagreements that rise up 
in the neighborhood or in the household ; if the child sees the 
parent steadily returning good for evil under circumstances 
the most painful and the most poignant — then he understands 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 219 

this high principle. It is the sight of a person who, though 
provoked and wronged, will not do wrong, but will return 
good for evil — it is the sight of such a person that strikes the 
deepest into the imagination of the child, and, if he ever 
comes to a like spiritual state, fashions in him early the 
measurements and possibilities of it. 

The same is true in regard to restraining the appetites. 
To tell a child that he must restrain his appetites is neces- 
sary ; and yet other incidental means of drill and training are 
necessary ; but, after all, it is seeing others do the thing : 
it is seeing the process gone through with ; it is seeing an in- 
ferior feeling subjected to pain for the sake of giving emanci- 
pation to a superior feeling — it is this that makes an impres- 
sion ©n the child's imagination. 

The experience with strong-natured children is, I think, 
almost always this : that they are willful, that they are 
headstrong, and that they will have their way until they see 
suffering in their parents on their account. If the father be 
robust and somewhat obstinate, and if the boy is obstinate, 
the father's law rather provokes the boy. The father's impe- 
rious " You shall," or " You shall not," drives the boy inside 
of himself, but it does not subdue him. The thing comes 
almost to the point of rupture. At evening the mother, all 
sweetness and tenderness and gentleness, is found by tlie boy 
dissolved in tears. She is seemingly heart-broken. She 
talks to the boy, and says the same things to him that the 
father did. The command was right. The father enjoined 
it by imperious conscience. The mother suffers. In the one 
case the boy looks at the matter in the light of his father's 
sternness, and in the other case he looks at it in the light of 
the mother's suffering. By the one he is made more willful, 
and by the other more yielding. In the presence of the father 
he is stubborn and silent ; but in the presence of his mother 
he acknowledges his fault and his duty, breaks down, and 
rises up out of his lower and worse self into his higher and 
better self. The instrument which inflamed his understand- 
ing and imagination, and gave him new light on the point at 
issue, was the suffering of the mother on that very point. 

So it is all the way through family training. Uncon- 



220 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

sciouslywe are using all sorts of instruments for the education 
of our children. We inspire them by ideas and by example. 
We resort to coaxing — that is to say, we solicit hope and 
promise reward. We touch the spring of joy in every form. 
But, after all, one of the master influences that are acting in 
the family training is the fact that father and mother, when 
well endowed themselves, are capable of enduring care, labor 
and self-sacrifice, curtailing their own liberty for the sake of 
augmenting the benefit of the children. The glory of the 
father and the mother in the child's thought in after-life is 
not altogether the beauty of their attainments. There is 
something that goes deeper than that — the sense that the 
child himself has been wrought out by the sacrifices of the 
parent. 

Can you raise up a more heroic idea in the mind of a gen- 
erous nature than that of an old New England farmer, who 
never had a classical education, but whose boy seems to 
be so endowed with natural talents that he is determined 
to give him an opportunity to develop them ? Between him 
and Nature on his farm there is a perpetual quarrel. Nature 
says that it shall be barren, and the farmer says that it shall 
not. He fights the winter, and it is ice. He fights the 
summer, and it is rocks. He earns but a pittance, and that 
by the severest toil before daylight and long after sundown ; 
saving at the table, saving on raiment, saving everywhere, 
that he may gather together a little money to put his boy to 
the academy and the college. So the boy feels that every 
single dollar that he spends represents some suffering on the 
part of his father. The father never calls it suffering ; for 
there is no generosity like that which love feels. Love never 
cares for what it gets ; but, oh ! how it rejoices in what it 
gives out ! That poor woman, his mother, whose hands are 
like horn, whose face is scarred with wrinkles, who is slender 
and bent and homely — for twenty years how she has worked 
for that child, night and day ! What tears she has shed for 
him ! What hours of fatigue she has gone through, and 
what sickness she has endured in his behalf ! How she has 
sought his highest good all the time without regard to her- 
self I And when, at last, the boy has received his education, 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 221 

and has entered upon public life, and is able to take care of 
these parents, what x^oyalty there is in father and mother to 
his mind ! No king with a crown on his head ever produced 
such an impression as they have produced. Where persons 
have labored for you, and suffered for you, and done all they 
could to benefit you, the knowledge of the fact touches the 
bottom of the divine nature in you, and you glory in it ; and 
it measures not the magnitude of care alone, but the intensity 
of love. Love that will do and that will suffer — oh ! that is 
love enough. 

Well, this is so in the sphere of the family because God 
made it so — that is, it is in accordance with the divine will. 
It is a part of the creative plan by which men are developed 
from a lower to a higher plane. Suffering is a midwife ; and 
it gives birth to better things in men. When it is vicarious — 
when it is suffering on the part of another for us — in one way 
it works in us, and in another way it works upon us ; but it 
works all the time. 

Now, when you go out into life, there is a faint and general 
idea of the value of moral qualities. When boys and girls have 
been brought up in the household, and have had a certain sort 
01 grounding in the rudiments of morality, and go out to fight 
the battles of life, there is a perpetual conflict between their 
higher and lower natures. They go out with a general idea 
of right and wrong. "I think almost every young person en- 
ters upon life with a generous purpose. Yery few persons go 
out meaning to be vulgar, or dishonest, or untruthful, or un- 
faithful, or selfish, or over-proud. Almost all the visions and 
day-dreams of youth are generous. The trouble is, with re- 
gard to almost all those elements with which they may have 
to deal every day, the young have no intense faith, by reason 
of having seen these elements made sacred by suffering. Men 
believe in truth, in fidelity, in friendship, in honor, in hon- 
esty ; but the conflicts and emergencies of life are all the time 
tempting them to sacrifice truth, and fidelity, and friendship, 
and honor, and honesty. These moral qualities never have 
great power over the imagination and over faith until they 
have been transfigured. Each one of them, we may almost 
say, must go through its hour of trial, and must be lifted 



222 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

up and transfigured as Christ was in sight of the three dis- 
ciples on the mountain-top. 

For example, everybody thinks fidelity is a noble quality. 
In small matters everybody tries to practice it. It is only in 
over-mastering hours, when fidelity requires great sacrifice, 
that men shrink back from it. But when under such circum- 
stances it is adhered to, the power of the example is tre- 
mendous. 

Take the case of the pilot who died so nobly on Lake Erie. 
A precious freight of human lives was on board. The ship 
was on fire. All depended on his being able to carry the 
vessel to the shore ; and he stood at the wheel, though 
the flames towered about him, and was literally burned to 
death. He chose to sacrifice his own life rather than to sac- 
rifice his duty. And there was no man with a pulse of man- 
hood in him who did not feel not only that there was something 
heroic in that man, but that there was something noble in 
fidelity itself — so noble that one might well long to be hero- 
ically faithful. Being borne up by a feeling of fidelity in the 
hour of trial — how noble that seems to one who has witnessed 
an exhibition of it ! 

Take the case of the engineer who, in that great disaster 
on the Shore Line Eoad, stood at his post, and gave his life 
deliberately to save the train. Take the case of the engi- 
neer who, above Northampton, in dashing against the rocks, 
was actually pierced through and through by parts of the 
engine, and who, so fastened that he could not get away, 
and while his bowels were literally gushing out, calmly gave 
directions to the men as to what should be done -with other 
parts of the engine, filling his place of duty to the last breath. 

Nobody can see such sights as these, and afterwards think 
of fidelity otherwise than in a noble light. How it is lifted 
up, and how heroic it is, when somebody has suffered for it, 
and when it has had somebody's life in it! 

According to the old Soman legend, when it once be- 
came needful that a gap should be filled at the cost of a life, 
a patriotic citizen . plunged himself into it to save the state. 
It may be true or false ; but that makes no difference so fai 
as the principle is concerned. To the imagination of the 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 223 

ancients it was true. And no human power ever did so much 
good to the state as a citizen who could throw himself into a 
gulf that the state might live. The yielding up of every- 
thing for the sake of a great principle is the way in which 
God brings those airy, evanescent things which we call moral 
qualities home to our bosom and sympathy and imitation. 

Do you ask who are the benefactors of the world ? Almost 
everybody, a little. But who are the men that have raised 
the whole idea of human character ? Who are the men that 
have made life noble above that which is animal and pleasure- 
life ? 

Take, for instance, those who suffered at the stake in 
olden times for their faith. Their faith may have been right 
or it may have been wrong ; but any man, whether he be a 
heathen, a Christian, a Mahomedan, a Protestant or a Cath- 
olic, who, sincerely believing in any truth, is willing to die 
rather than renounce it, augments the dignity and grandeur 
of manhood. There is nothing that sings like a bird through 
all time, as does a heroic action. 

When Grace Darling ventured, at her own peril, a woman, 
bo .save the lives of those who were strange to her, she not 
only saved their lives, but she raised the tone of heroism in 
the whole world. 

When Florence Nightingale walked out of the accustomed 
sphere of woman's sympathy, and organized charity in a far- 
distant land, devoting herself with such assiduity to the good 
work that, ever since, by reason of her long-suffering and ex- 
posure, she has been an invalid — then she raised the concep- 
tion of benevolence, philanthropy, fidelity and heroism ; and 
it will never go down again. The example which she 
sot has bred a thousand imitators. When I think what 
the magnificent heroism of women was in our war ; when I 
think how zealously and efficiently they labored ; when I 
think of their wide-spread charity, which was scarcely less 
perfect in its organization than the army itself, and by 
which relief was carried along the whole line of suffering — 
when I think of these things, I say to myself, i( Behold what 
has been done because Florence Nightingale lived ! '*' 

When I think what has been done by kind men in regard 



224 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

to prison discipline and the bringing back to manhood of men 
who have been degraded by crime ; when I perceive that we 
are humane, at last, in jails and prisons, I say, "See what 
Howard did ! " 

There comes in that great class of passages which repre- 
sent Christ as suffering for the law ; and theologians, per- 
haps not without some excuse, but yet ignorantly and errone- 
ously, have argued that Christ suffered for the sake of the 
ideal moral law of the universe ; that there was something in 
abstract law, hanging above men's heads, which required 
somebody to suffer for it. But the Scripture, going back of 
our conception of moral law, argued that the Jews under the 
old ritual law should accept Christ as the fulfillment of the 
law ; that in taking him thus they took him in an ampler 
form than they otherwise could ; and that thus in a sacrificial 
sense it was necessary for him to suffer for the fulfilling of 
the law. It is claimed that he bore the sins of men literally. 
That he bore our sins is true. I bear the sins of every man 
that I love and help. I, like every parent, bear the sins of 
my children. By sympathy and suffering I bear the conse- 
quences of their wrong-doing. I interpose between them 
and their suffering. That there is a larger sense than a 
figurative one of sympathy may be true ; nevertheless, in 
general, Christ bore our sins in this : that he put himself in 
such relations to us as that by his sympathy, by his love, by 
his suffering for us, he interposed between us and the domin- 
ion, power, and suffering of sin. 

There are a great many who do not know how to get over 
the teaching that Cod poured out his vengeance on his well- 
beloved Son. They cannot endure the idea that an innocent 
person should have received the thunderbolt of divine wrath. 
They say that it was unjust and hard. To tell them that 
Christ was willing does not help the matter to their imagina- 
tion. But you see that if the line of discussion which we 
have followed this morning be true, there is no foundation 
for any such representation as that God was angry with the 
world. When he declared that he so loved the world that he 
sent his Son to die for it, he made a disclosure of the Divine 
sympathy. Christ stood, not representing divinity in full 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 225 

panoply, not representing God in his infinitude, but repre- 
senting him in the* flesh, restricted, and making manifest 
what was his interior nature, and interpreting him as a min- 
iature interprets that which is larger than itself. He was a 
representation of the love of God, brought down to men in 
limited conditions. He was an interpretation, a manifesta- 
tion, a disclosure, bringing to the human reason and imagina- 
tion that which the world needed to know — namely, that the 
strokes of blind fate, that the cruelty of law, that the on- 
going of penalties, did not represent the highest forces in the 
universe, but represented the constitution of things in the 
material and lower sphere. He made known to the world that 
there was a higher Power, that there was a nobler range of 
being, that there were other impulses and principles that dis- 
closed themselves, by which the universe was governed. His 
mission was to reconcile men to God — not to reconcile God to 
men. He came to bring out a power which should cause 
men to lift up their eyes and see that whatever was romantic 
in love on earth, that whatever was faithful in affection in 
the household, that whatever sacrifice there was in love, that 
whatever there was of kindness and mercy, was the interior 
nature of God. There stands the Sun of righteousness, blaz- 
ing with this one radiant interpretation : that God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for it. 

Now look at some passages, and see if I am leading you 
out of the way in this matter. Let me read again the text : 

" For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died 
for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet 
perad venture for a good man some would even daiee to die. But God 
commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us." 

Hear what the Lord himself says, speaking in the Gospel 

of John : 

"This is my commandment, That ye love one another. Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for hia 
friends." 

There is the measure of love. That is the purpose which 
the laying down of life is to serve. It is to be an interpreta- 
tion of divine love. 

Listen to what Peter says : 



226 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

" For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the un- 
just, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, 
but quickened by the Spirit." 

He did not say that Christ suffered for the ideal or ab- 
stract moral law ; or that he suffered to rectify the moral 
sense of the universe ; or that he suffered in order that there 
might be an equivalent in his suffering for all the suffering 
that was threatened to man. In all the declarations of 
Christ's death mention is made of the divine love manifested 
in order to bring us to God. The death of Christ was to 
raise our conception of the grandeur of the moral qualities of 
God's nature, so that men should be drawn to them with an 
irresistible attraction. 

In 1 John 3 :16 the declaration is made even more strongly 

than in Peter : 

" Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his 
life for us ; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." 

Thus it is brought right home to a practical application. 

But it does not follow that there may not be other influ- 
ences at work. I do not say that this ennobling of moral 
qualities, or this interpretation of God to the imagination and 
the heart, was all. What I say is, that it is all that is given 
to us. It is that side of this great transaction which shines 
down upon this world. And still, theology has occupied it- 
self in developing the other and imaginary side, which may 
or may not be true. The New Testament makes known to 
us as the reason of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, its 
moral power upon the imagination and heart of man. It 
is not necessary to say that there are no other results of his 
death, but it is right to say that so far as revelation is made 
to us it deals with the ennobling of divine love by the spec- 
tacle of God suffering for the love which he bore to us. It 
was the more marvelous because it was God, and because he 
suffered not for friends but for enemies. 

He who lifts up, by suffering, any single quality, and 
makes men feel, " I never could have thought of and never 
could have done anything so noble if it had not been for his 
example," filling the world with an enthusiasm for a moral 
invisible principle — he who does that uses suffering divinely. 



VHE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 22? 

I think there is nothing more beautiful in the world than 
the story of Joan of Arc. It defies explanation — and indeed 
I never want to have it explained ; for some stories, when 
you analyze them, cease to be stories, and become philoso- 
phies, as flowers, when you analyze them, cease to be flowers, 
and become scientific facts. Joan of Arc has thrown around 
heroism an inspiration which makes it richer and more glori- 
ous. I do not care whether she saved France or lost France 
— there may be some fiction on that subject ; but she saved 
the world, and lifted that up many degrees. 

John Brown was not, I think, a man to be admired in all 
respects ; he was not a man whose wisdom was to be praised ; 
he was not a man whose statesmanship was the best ; but he 
was a man who, looking upon the sufferings of others, felt that 
his whole life was good for nothing to him except as an offer- 
ing to them. And he did offer his life to them ; and when it 
was accepted, and he was led forth to the sacrifice, he kissed 
a little child. He would not take regulation prayers, but he 
was glad to have poor slave mothers pray for him. He look- 
ed upon the farms and hills as he passed by them, and said, 
" Oh, how beautiful they are!" He went to death as men 
usually go to a banquet. And all this was not for himself, 
but for others. He saw men who could not speak for them- 
selves, nor lift up their manacled hands for themselves ; and 
he suffered for them. Whatever the mistakes of his judg- 
ment were, he meant to give liberty to those who were in 
bondage, and manhood to those who were chattels ; and he 
gave his life to do it. And as our soldiers went through the 
States singing, 

"John Brown's soul is marching on,' 
John Brown's name will travel through the ages as an illus- 
trious example of what a man may do who is willing to suffer 
for a great principle or a great sentiment. 

Looking, then, at suffering, it may be considered a penal- 
ty in thousands of cases ; and that is its lowest range, and is 
most frequent ; and under such circumstances it may be re- 
garded as a personal drill or exercise. But when it rises to the 
higher sphere, and becomes an example, a moral witness, an 
aspiration, a heroism, it has gained a prophetic place, and 



228 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFEBmG. 

stands between God and man, making known from God the 
higher truths to man in such a way as nothing else can de- 
clare them to him. That a life is greater than a death I do not 
doubt ; and yet, as men are made, dying produces an effect of 
moral greatness more than any living does. It touches the 
senses. Though they constitute the weak side of human 
nature, nevertheless that is the side that must be touched. 
We know that Christ ever liveth to make intercession for those 
who seek the heavenly land; this is a glorious truth ; and 
there is more in such living than in simply dying ; and yet, 
the story of the death of Christ has touched the world, and 
will touch it to the end, as no story of living can. The life 
of Christ was sweeter, was more fruitful in events, and touch- 
ed more sides of visible human nature, than his death ; and 
yet there is no thought of his life that thrills the imagina- 
tion, that stirs you up in your nobler feelings, as does the 
story of his death. For suffering, by the divine constitution, 
has a power which nothing else has to inspire enthusiasm in 
men, when it is disinterested, heroic, for others, and not for 
one's self. 

Hence the symbols of sacrifice and of suffering in the 
Old Testament, and the interpretations of symbols by the 
life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ as represented in 
the New Testament, all proceed upon that deep underlying 
principle which philosophy has not found out, but which was 
embodied in the whole moral system of the Old Testament 
and the New ; and they were an argument for the inspiration 
of Scripture long before there was a philosophy in the world. 
Proceeding on empirical grounds, that was a principle which 
struck the foundations of the human soul in the most potent 
manner. 

In view of this exposition, I remark, first, that all who 
are embarrassed and tried in regard to the necessity of the 
suffering which fell on our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 
may find rest in the simple exposition of the New Testament. 
It was necessary that he should suffer, it is said. It is held 
that the law required that he should suffer.- This was a local 
and national argument. It is only historically applicable to 
us. For, when the Jews, by long training, had been at last, 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 229 

by stroke upon stroke, hedged in to their own system, and 
made obedient to it, there came preachers to them, saying 
that they should accept the Lord Jesus Christ as they under- 
stood him, rather than Moses and the Mosaic economy ; and 
they, by the force of habit, and by the impulse of moral feel- 
ing, said, "We will not abandon our faith." "But," said 
the apostles, "it is not abandoning your faith to follow 
Christ : it is fulfilling it. All that the law means by its sacri- 
fices and observances is fulfilled or represented in a living 
form in him. And when you take him you take the law, not 
as a dead letter, not as a sacrificial formula, not as the blood 
of bulls and goats literally : the shedding of his blood for the 
remission of sins, the cruelty and suffering which he endured, 
are typified by the blood of beasts in the Old Testament dis- 
pensation." The fact that Christ died for the world has an 
effect on the moral sentiments and the imagination. The 
great sacrificial elements of the Old and New Testaments 
take hold of the minds of men. 

When you mechanicalize this, and look upon it as a mer- 
chant does upon a bargain, as though God gave so much for 
so much, it seems to me that degradation has entered into 
the sanctity of moral qualities, and I feel humiliated. 

If this general idea is true, I remark again, you can see 
how a man's life may be lost and yet saved, and saved and yet 
lost. 

There is a circumspect and cautious life and economy of 
disposition. Men are capable of living on a comparatively 
low plane of morality. 

Never expend yourself any more than is necessary in order 
to maintain a sort of symmetry and consistency and safety of 
life, and go evenly through the world, and die in the mild 
regard of the neighborhood, and be forgotten speedily ! Per- 
sons who do this are oftentimes much praised as being good 
citizens — and they are good citizens on a very low plane. 
But we find in the Word of God intimations of a heroism 
which is a very different thing. 

" He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." 

He that does not care for safety ; he that does not care for 
friends ; he that is so fired with purity, with a sense of the 



230 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

dignity of truth, of fidelity, of faith, of hope, and of love ; 
he who, in view of any great moral quality, is willing to sacri- 
fice himself that he may hecome a witness to it — that man 
really uses his life for that moral quality, and so for Christ's 
sake. One act of heroism is better than a thousand years of 
talking about heroism would be. 

If Kossuth had staid at home, and yielded to the de- 
mands that were made upon him, and looked out for himself, 
he might have been worldly prosperous, he might have been 
popular, and he might have been courted ; and he would 
have been hastening on to oblivion, like many of his con- 
temporaries. But he preferred to expatriate himself ; and he 
has been wandering up and down in the earth ever since, 
without home and without means. He has refused charity, 
though he has been so poor that he has seen his household 
dissolving about him. He would not take amnesty, nor go 
back to his native country, but he has dedicated his life to 
solemn testimony against oppression and in favor of liberty. 
And no crown on earth is to be compared with the glory 
which is already covering his brow. There are few men who 
have lived so much as he. There are few men who have 
sown their life so that it shall bring forth such seed in 
any generation as his will. I loved him when he was here ; 
and I revere him now that he is gone. Human nature is 
larger for his living. 

This is not a subject open for curiosity only ; it is not a 
subject simply for admiration or for sympathy : it is a subject 
which comes very close home for examination to every one of 
us. 

What are our lives ? On what points do they center hero- 
ically ? Where are we willing to stand and suffer for the 
sake of principle ? Where are we willing to show forth the 
divine nature ? What thing are we making more luminous ? 
What quality is being made by us more desirable in the eyes 
of men ? 

If we go into the various conflicts of life with a low feel- 
ing, with the thrift-feeling, with a feeling of economy ; if we 
enter upon worldly affairs with equivocation and falsehood for 
the sake of making and saving money ; if we yield up truth 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 231 

and honor and manhood for pelf — then we vulgarize prin- 
ciple. But if a man can stand in the midst of trouble, and 
say, "Come what may, truth and honor shall not depart 
from me ;" if a man can in the sight of all who are around 
him yield bodily ease, yield pride, yield vanity, yield every- 
thing but fidelity to truth and honor and friendship — that 
man is preaching Christ, though he may not know the church, 
and though he may not know what he it doing. I hope in 
God that there is many a man who is feeling Christ like the 
man who was healed, who was cast out of the temple for his 
faithfulness to his Healer, and was found of Christ. The 
Savior said to him, " Dost thou believe on the Son of G-od ?" 
" Who is he, that I might believe on him ?" said the man — 
and he was talking with him face to face ; and his heart was 
open and ready to receive him. 

I think there are hearts standing in such sympathy with 
the heart of Christ that if they knew what it was that was 
moving upon them, if the film or veil between them and 
the Saviour could be dropped, they would cry out, "My 
Lord ! my God !" And there be many and many Christians 
who carry the name of Christ blazoned on their foreheads, 
and have not his spirit, and are not witnessing for him by suf- 
fering or self-sacrifice. They dishonor that name ; they 
tread upon it ; they humble it ; they break the faith of man 
in it. 

A hundred men who could not be made to sacrifice truth, 
who could not be made to fall from duty, who would cheer- 
fully accept suffering ; a hundred men who should be as he- 
roic as Christ was, would lift the world, at one impulse, 
clear through a hundred degrees of excellence. We need 
again, not only the Sufferer, Christ, in us, the hope of 
glory, but Christ in us glorious by making us willing to 
suffer. 

Now you have light thrown upon the apostles' experience, 
who counted it all joy when they fell into temptations and 
trials, and who rejoiced in infirmity. 



232 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

PEAYEE BEFOEE THE SERMON". 

We draw near to thee, our heavenly Father, moved by thy Spirit. 
For how should we think of thee, or 1 if t ourselves above the influences 
that darken and hold us down to the earth through the flesh, but by the 
quickening power of thy Spirit? We rejoice that these thoughts which 
rise spontaneously to thee are answers to thy call, and that we have 
in thee evidence of our adoption, and evidence of thy calling, of thine 
influence, and thy disposition. We rejoice to think of thee as the 
Father of our spirits. We rejoice to think that all our dispositions 
are to thee as the dispositions of our children are to us ; and that thou 
art living and governing, not in supreme selfishness, and not to work 
out thine own glory as separated from the happiness of every other 
one, but that thou art the Lord and the Father of all, and art rearing 
generations and perfecting them, that they may be presented with- 
out blemish or spot before the throne of thy Father, and enter upon 
the inheritance of eternal perfectness. 

We beseech of thee, O Lord our God, that thou wilt not be dis- 
couraged with us, with our slowness, with our selfishness, with our 
disobedience, and with our oft turning back. Grant unto us that 
persuasive influence of thy Spirit which shall hold us more constantly 
to the things that we know to be right, and which shall work mightily 
in us against the things that are wrong, overcoming easily besetting 
sins, pushing aside, by the power of God thafc is in us, vehement 
temptations, delivering us from the thrall of fear, and inspiring us 
with holy courage, and with an enterprise for things that are true 
and pure and good. 

And now, we beseech of thee that thou wilt draw near to every 
one in thy presence according to the thing that is uppermost : to those 
that are in distress by reason of their sinfulness; to those whose con- 
sciences oppress them and cloud their souls with guilt. Will the 
Lord speak forgiveness of their sins and peace unto them. Grant that 
the way in which they may lean upon thee for justification may be 
made plain to them. May they trust thee, and not their own goodness. 
May they rejoice in the righteousness of Christ, which is made per- 
fect for them. 

We pray for all those who are in the midst of darkness and dis- 
tress of mind by reason of sickness, by reason of bereavements, by 
reason of great losses, by reason of inward sorrows. O Lord, thou 
knowest how to weep with those who weep. Thou art in sympathy 
with the stricken. Thou thyself didst love, and thou knowest the 
mortal anguish of those who are bereaved. Look with compassion 
upon them, remembering not only thine earthly sufferings, but thy 
life, that carries with it eternal sympathy, and succor, and kindness, 
as the loving Saviour. 

We pray that thou wilt grant to those who are borne down by 
cares and burdens which gird them and harass them, that divine 
strength which shall make all burdens light— for if thou dost put 
thine arms under us, though the world were laid upon us we could 
bear it ; but without thee how quickly our faith goes ! Our courage is 
as the summer brook without thee. So grant to those who are weary 
and heavy laden that peace and rest which is promised unto them. 



THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 233 

We pray that thou wilt give light to those who are perplexed. 
Remember parents that know not what to do with their children. 
Remember those who know not the path in which they should walk. 
Grant that they may have such a sense of the presence of God, and 
such a trust in the reality and helpfulness of divine providence that 
orders every day things aright, that they may be able to walk with 
composure. Even if they suffer, may they be able to say, " Though 
he slay me yet will I trust him." 

We pray that thou wilt grant to those to whom the outlook of life 
is dark, and who seem to themselves to have gone to the end of their 
strength, such a sense of God present with them that they shall be 
contented to stand, and to bear, and having done all things yet to 
stand. May there be that rest in God's goodness and power and wis- 
dom and presence which shall help all classes and conditions in the 
various emergencies of life. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon all those 
who are in this congregation ; upon all those who are far from thee, 
and who do not feel the need of God ; upon all those whose prosperity 
hath blinded them, or who are sinfully separating themselves from 
God's dominion. We pray that they may be brought to a nobler 
sense of duty, and to a higher conception of their inward and spirit- 
ual need. Grant, we beseech of thee, that they may have the power 
of God poured upon them, and that they may live a new life, and 
experience those higher joys which are heavenly and divine. 

We pray for thy blessing to rest, this day, upon all thy worship- 
ing servants of every name and everywhere. May those who preach 
the gospel of Christ speak in simplicity and sincerity, with light from 
on high. And we pray that they may have power given them by 
which they may be able to do good to those to whom they speak. 

We pray that thou wilt lead this great nation aright. More and 
more purge away its ignorance, its corruptions, and all its' attendant 
evils in its career of great prosperity. We pray that thou wilt grant 
that it may be temperate, forbearing, patient ; and that it may set an 
example to men of wisdom in law, of obedience thereto, of great 
nobleness and humanity, so that men shall believe that we are free, 
and that society is free by the cleansing power of religion, which is 
nobler than all authority, and all compressions by the hand of 
despotism. 

We pray that thou wilt hold us back from violent passions, and 
from all their outgushings into war. Grant that this nation may be 
an example of humanity. May it seek justice by forbearance, by 
ways of peace, and compass the ways of humanity by the spirit of 
the Lord Jesus Christ. 

We pray, O God, that thou wilt send the light and the truth 
abroad in all the earth. Oh that thou wouldst hasten the day when 
Jesus Christ shall fulfill thy predictions, and shall reign over the 
earth. Let that new heaven come, and that new earth in which 
dwelleth righteousness. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. 
Amen. 



234 THE MORAL TEACHING OF SUFFERING. 

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMOK 

Our Father, we pray that thou wilt give us an understanding of 
the inward nature of the truth. Grant unto us such sympathy with 
thee that we may know the nature of Christ, and that we may feel 
the full power of Christ's example and love in us. Art thou not pre- 
paring to make thyself more conspicuous? Hast thou not comedown 
through the ages? and hast thou not throughout the ages been bear- 
ing fruit which yet shall be disclosed ? O Lord, come. Fill the earth 
with thy power. Behold the passions of men. See what darkness 
is upon the flood and upon the mountain. See what midnight is ir 
the human soul. O thou Deliverer and Emancipator, come and break 
open prison doors, and strike off shackles, and cause to be lifted up 
the voice of righteousness and of triumph. Come as a Conqueror. 
Come to lead thy people from conquering to conquer. And to thy 
name shall be the glory forever and ever. Amen, 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE? 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE? 



" And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom 
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."-— 
Matt. xi. 12. 



The kingdom of heaven, as applied to individuals, is the 
absolute predominance in the soul of each man, or, as applied 
to the world, the absolute reign, in mankind, of the superior 
faculties — the intellect, with the moral and spiritual elements. 

God governs men by the use of their own nature. It is 
through those parts of the soul which are most like his own 
aature, and nearest to it, that he governs. When that part 
of the human soul which represents most nearly the divine 
thought and the divine sentiment is in the ascendency in the 
individual to such an extent that it controls the social and 
civic and national life, the kingdom of heaven has begun ; 
and when the superior nature of man dominates entirely his 
inferior nature, the kingdom of heaven on earth is consum- 
mated. 

The human soul is a collection of forces, a great many of 
them, very different in kind, susceptible of co-ordination, 
therefore of subordination, and so of harmony and peace. 
This subordination and harmonization of the several faculties 
in the human soul is the moral meaning of life. It is the 
end for which we were sent into the world. It is the doing 
of this that is in the largest sense education. 

I do not propose to consider this in its relation to the in- 
dividual. If we were to ask, What is the progress of the 
kingdom of God in the individual heart according to this 

TKOTtsnAY Morning, Thanksgiving Dat, November 27, 1873. "Lesson : Isaiah 
Ixi. Hymns (Plymouth Collection); xVus. 1344,997. 



238 HOW GOES THE BATTLE ? 

psychological view ? such an inquiry would not be to ask for 
technical experiences and hopes : it would be to ask, What is 
in each individual the relative distribution of force among 
his faculties ? It would be to ask, Which side of his nature 
is strongest, and growing stronger ? It would be to ask, 
What are the parts in him which predominate and govern ? 
It would be to ask, " To what degree has his superior nature 
gained control over all the rest ? These are the evidences of 
piety that would belong to the new philosophic school, in- 
cluding in them, of course, all that the old tests used to 
mean, and a great deal more that they reached out after, but 
that the time had not come for them to apply. 

I propose this same view in regard to the world's condi- 
tion, and in regard to the life and state of nations. 

W T hat is the distribution of force ? What has been gained ? 
How does the conflict stand ? The kingdom of heaven is to 
suffer violence — that is to say, the whole development, the 
great conflict, by which the superior nature of man shall rise 
into ascendency over his lower and inferior nature, is going on, 
and has been going on long, as applied to the races and the earth. 
What is the state of that conflict to-day ? Does it inspire 
hope, or despondency ? What is the condition of the battle ? 
Violence there is yet. As it were, the field is taken and re- 
taken. Sometimes the flesh is in the ascendency, and some- 
times the spirit. The conflict of the physical and of the 
spiritual is going on all around the globe, every day, in the 
individual, in households, in neighborhoods, in states, in na- 
tions, and in the whole race. It is a perpetual battle that 
will not end till the" sun stands a thousand years in the firma- 
ment. 

The animal man refuses to be broken into the intelligent 
moral-minded man ; and these conflicts take on the propor- 
tion of the globe. They are represented in laws, in institu- 
tions, in governments, in policies, in business. The whole 
inward and outward history of society is but a history of this 
conflict. Whatever belongs to society as distinguished from 
the physical globe is the incarnation of the human soul ; and 
all laws, and industries, and customs, and habits, and tend- 
encies, are but the human soul walking outside of itself in 



SOW GOES THE BATTLE ? 239 

the guise of exterior institutions, of things representing soul- 
forces developed into industries, and families, and institu- 
tions, and laws, and customs. The whole work of life and 
its contests but represent what man has thought, felt, wished, 
done ; and its perfectnesses represent more or less the advance 
of the struggles which are going on between the animal man 
and the spiritual man. 

It is worth our while, even in a cursory and superficial 
manner, on such a day as this, to inquire, What is the state 
of this conflict ? Is the kingdom of heaven, on the whole, 
gaining in the world, or is it losing ? Are the nobler facul- 
ties of man, on the whole, gaining ascendency, or are they 
losing power ? 

First, is the sum total of the forces of the race gaining, or 
losing ? There has been a vague impression — and at some 
times it has assumed a definite form of statement — that the 
early races were far stronger, far wiser, and far happier than 
the subsequent and the present ones. It has been supposed 
that on the whole a gradual process of degeneration has been 
going on. I need not say that the arguments employed to 
substantiate that theory are myths — that that whole history 
is a fable. I aver that there never has been a time in the 
history of the race, so far as history can reveal any light to 
us, in which the generating power of the brain was so great 
as it is to-day. There never has been a time when man, as a 
thinking, willing, executive creature, was so potential as he 
is to-day. I am not speaking of whether his development is 
of a higher or a lower kind ; but I say that the brain of man 
is a far more powerful instrument, taking the race through- 
out the world, to-day, than it ever was before. It throws out 
more forces, and is developing greater effects, than it ever 
did before. 

If you examine barbarous nations, you will find that they 
stand where they always did — and they do not come into the 
question ; but if you examine civilized nations, it will be 
found that there are more of them, that they are spread over 
a larger portion of the globe, and that the civilized or edu- 
cated brain of the world is a thousand times more fruitful 
than it ever was before. Not that there have not been, from 



240 HOW GOES THE BATTLE 9 

the earliest days, single men who were superior ; but the dis- 
tinctive peculiarity of the growth of our times is, that where- 
as now and then in antiquity, before the advent of Christ, 
there were solitary cases, single men, individuals growing 
alone, as it were, pasture-oaks that had been nourished all 
around by the free access of sun and air, and taking propor- 
tions that have scarcely been matched or equaled since, that 
which used to consummate itself in single men at the expense 
of all the rest of the community is now being diffused 
throughout the whole community; and though here and 
there is an individual who is great, such instances are, com- 
paratively speaking, few, because the community itself has 
grown so wide and so broad and so strong. 

If the Alleghanies could only be approached upon a level 
from the point at which we stand, they would lift themselves 
up into the air with a height that would appal us ; but as we 
go to the Alleghanies by gradual ascent, hill after hill, till 
the summit is reached, before we think, we have gone over 
the mountains. The outlying lands on either side have been 
lifted up so much that the center peak does not show how 
tall it is. 

If you raise the average of society around about philoso- 
phers, and priests, and kings, and great men, it will seem as 
though they were not so high, after all. We judge of the 
relative power of the old heroes and men of renown under an 
illusion. The community itself has gone so high now that 
no man in it seems so great as those whom we read of in his- 
tory. They seem great, not only because they really were 
great, but also because comparison made them great. They 
were magnified. We see them in almost, I may say, myth- 
ical proportions. But if we look through the civilized na- 
tions, how vastly increased do we find to be the number of 
those who exert moral power, and who are forces in the State 
and in the human race ! It cannot be doubted, I think, that, 
while in barbarous nations the productive power is the same 
that it ever has been, yet in all civilized nations the product- 
ive power is increased to an incredible extent, and the force 
of the human brain is enormously augmented. 

Then next, and more important, is the question, ' ( What 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 241 

is the relative distribution of the mind-forces in the civilized 
globe ?" I have said that there is more of it ; that it means 
more ; and that it is more sensitive and more productive. 
Now, where is its productiveness ? Is it at the bottom or at 
the top ? Is it bringing out thorns and thistles and weeds to 
torment the husbandman, or is it bringing out the pleasant 
fruits of righteousness to reward «him ? Which side of the 
human mind is most productive ? Has there been a change ? 
and if so, is that change prophetic of a better future ? 

The primary question, then, is, What is the world's con- 
dition as to the proportion between physical and passional 
force on the one side, and moral and intellectual force on the 
other ? Once, physical and passional force, as represented by 
fear, or superstition, or what not, simple or in various com- 
binations, ruled the individual, the State, and the whole re- 
ligious development of the race. 

There is a distinct representation of these asseverations in 
history to the time of Christ, and also developed long after 
it. It must be said that down to within comparatively a few 
hundred years, the bottom-force, the curse of the world, was 
physical force, latent, but potential ; or, more frequently, 
and more largely, overt and active ; it has been the all-con- 
trolling power of the brain working through the physical, 
and for physical purposes, that has characterized the earlier 
developments not only in civilization, but even after Christi- 
anity began to be a struggling influence among the races of 
men. This wrought upon the individual. It wrought upon 
his relations to the State, which was an arbitrary, an absolute, 
an exact, and a despotic force, reared up in the midst of the 
people, around about which were moral influences, but which 
bore about the same relation to them that the stones of a 
fortification do to the vines and grasses that grow upon them. 

Now, physical force, in all its forms, is tending to be sub- 
ordinated to mind-force. I should be sorry to think that the 
basilar forces of human nature were being weakened. I need 
not say how much I disagree with the poetry, or, if you 
choose to call it so, the philosophy, which teaches that men 
ought to crucify, in any literal sense, their appetites and pas- 
sion s. Such a bad name have these unrestrained and unedu- 



242 HOW &OES THE BATTLE $ 

cated forces gained among men, that it seems singular to hear 
a minister declare that the very substratum and foundation on 
which we hope to build the better race, is in the energy and 
productive power of the passions and appetites of human na- 
ture ; but you are to remember that there is an analogical 
condition in the moral world to that which has been discov- 
ered and developed in the physical world — namely, the corre- 
lation and conservation of forces. "We have learned, lately, 
that there is no substantial destruction of any force, whether 
it be heat, or light, or magnetism, or motion. ISTone of them 
can be destroyed. You can convert one of them into an- 
other, and they can be made to run the round of the circle ; 
but that is all you can do with them. 

And so it is with the cerebral forces of men. There is 
such a thing as conservation and substitution as applied to 
them. The appetites and the passions can be converted, and 
can be substituted — in other words, they can be turned into 
social forces and moral forces ; and they reappear in con- 
science, in benevolence, in reason, and in the moral senti- 
ments, giving to them color, flavor, and power by which they 
draw the sum-total of human enginery behind them. This 
is going on now. 

Men are, and ought to be, broad at the base of the head. 
Men whose heads are built like a ladder, small at the bottom 
and small at the top, with no breadth at the base, are for- 
ever apparently about to be something that they never are, 
and about to do something that they never do — casting 
the shadow of good things that never come ! On the other 
hand, men who have power at the bottom — provided it is by 
conservation and correlation transmuted into something other 
than physical, so that it becomes social and moral and intel- 
lectual — they are the men who give to us our ideal concep- 
tions of manhood itself. This, certainly, is now going on. 

Force, happily, is not decreased : it would be a calamity, 
as I have said, if it were ; but it is applied far more than ever 
to the subjugation of physical nature ; to the production of 
new external elements of life ; and within men it is more and 
more turned into energy of thought, energy of will, energy of 
moral sentiment, and energy of Christian civilization. All 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE $ 243 

ideas, all discoveries, in the magnificent train of modern civ- 
ilization, are tending to take on economic forms for man's 
use. The intellect, which never was so active, was never so 
universally active. It never had such co-operative power for 
creating a perfect atmosphere, which stimulates the average 
intelligence of man, and which is, therefore, so productive of 
thoughts and discoveries and universal intellectual fruits 
as now, working not simply for matter, but through matter, 
to dominate matter ; and dominating matter for the purpose 
of creating social comfort ; and creating social comfort for 
the sake of raising the moral stature of the individual man ; 
and raising the stature of the individual man for the sake of 
producing a better race — better nations and a better globe. 
All abstract principles, like laws in nature, fly in the air 
until somebody can catch them and bring them down to fixed 
work. Abstract principles are like rivers in the wilderness, 
flowing night and day with power, but turning no mill. 
They come from the sea, they fall on the mountain, they run 
down through their channels back to the sea. Round and 
round they go in this perpetual circuit, doing nothing until 
civilization stops the water, and pours it over the wheel, and 
says, "Work for your living." Then these forces begin to 
be productive. 

Abstract ideas, and the abstract conception of natural 
laws, are the same. They do a certain amount of work. But 
when, by-and-by, philosophers, architects of ideas, begin to 
open up great natural laws to the apprehension of men, and 
so make the individual larger, stronger, and better, and make 
the family better, and society better, and the race better, then 
these wild colts of the air are harnessed and broken to. in- 
dustry, and men's souls ride them. This work was never 
going on so fast before as it is going on now. Never was it 
going on so widely. Never was it going on so obviously in 
the stream of Divine influences. 

There are three grand elements by which we may ascer- 
tain the direction, gauge the depth, and measure the speed 
of that grand world-current which men may call by what 
name they please, but which I call the evolution of the human 
race under the divine inspiration. 



244 HOW GOES THE BATTLE t 

Whether, on the whole, human society is slowly coming to 
a state in which the reason and the moral sentiments are pre- 
dominating over passion and the physical forces is a question 
which concerns and interests every single man. How is it, 
then, with civil governments ? Has that predominance of 
the higher nature which we note in individuals, and which 
characterizes households and portions of the community, 
gone on in men generically, and in governments ? Are gov- 
ernments to-day better or worse, on the whole, than they 
were before, or at the time of Christ ? Better, better, im- 
measurably better ! They are growing less dynastic. They 
are, of necessity, introducing more and more of the popular ele- 
ment. But what is the introduction of the popular element ? 
It is the substitution of universal well-being as determined by 
the wisdom and experience of the race, rather than dynastic 
habit and dynastic will. The thought of the race about itself 
is appearing in government, and not in a few men at the top 
of government determining the race-condition. The think- 
ing-power and the will-power of mankind is beginning to 
control government, instead of force directed by a few. 

This statement has many relations ; but the point is, that 
universal sentiment has begun to develop the soul-force of 
the race. Heart-wants are modifying dynastic ideas and 
aristocratic absolutism. These were once substantially direct- 
ed by force, and were maintained by the ascendency of force. 
Now there has Come about them the solvent power of thoughts. 
Now the cry of trouble is beginning to be felt as a political 
power. Now the soul's mourning is beginning to be heard 
in the Cabinet. Now what men want for their higher selves 
is beginning to be debated in legislation. Now men that 
are armed and fighting are fighting for ideas rather than for 
things. There has been a vast transition. A huge desert has 
been crossed to bring nations and the race to this position. 

So, also, if you look, not alone at the form and nature 
of governments, but at the conduct of nations toward 
nations, at the interchange of conduct, and national law, 
and national morality and national intercourse, it will be 
found that precisely the same tendencies are developed 
there. The basilar force is commuted into a higher form 






HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 245 

• 
of intellectual, moral and social force. And the policy or 
intercourse of nations is coming to stand upon a higher 
level, and to be not only the fruit, but the seed again, of the 
reinforcement of man's spiritual nature. It was the moral 
influence of the great thinking body of citizens on the two 
sides of the ocean that prevented the' precipitation of the 
mother and the daughter into a cruel and needless war. 

If any one asks me, " Where are the mile-stones set up 
that mark plainly the distance which has been traveled ?" I 
point to our old colonial times, and to what our fathers suf- 
fered under the despotism of the mother country, when 
Chatham declared that the colonies were to be mere tenders 
to the home-government ; when it was declared by this great 
man that there ought not to be allowed so much manufactur- 
ing in the colonies as to make a hobnail ; when it was forbid- 
den that men should appropriate their own streams to run 
mills without permission from Great Britain ; when the Brit- 
ish government forbade men to cut the timber of their forests 
without Her Majesty's permission ; when the knowledge that 
we made hats in this country came near producing a revolu- 
tion in Great Britain. That long, hard physical government 
passed away with the Eevolution, which was as much a com- 
mercial as it was a military war ; which was a battle for polit- 
ical liberty, in order that commercial liberty might be ob- 
tained. Such was the motive of government and rebellion as 
far down as that. 

Come down to 1812, when another war was waged, not 
because we were restrained in manufacturing or invaded in 
our territories, but because the rights of our citizens under 
the American flag were violated. We went to war on that 
issue ; and it was a very much higher war than any which 
had preceded it. That which we opposed was the obstruc- 
tion of individual right. The right of an American citizen 
had become an entity. It was something definite. It was 
worthy of a policy, and worthy, also, of the whole power of 
public sentiment and of the national arms. 

Come down to a still later period — to our great civil con- 
flict for the liberty of the common man ; for the liberty of 
labor ; for the liberty of humanity to sprout and grow un- 



246 HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 

* 

checked by law or institution ; for the liberty of a great 
nation to purge itself of elements which were mutually con- 
tradictory and destructive. When that great conflict was 
pending in our death struggle ; when the balances hung even; 
when if ever friendship meant life ; when if ever to be be- 
trayed, or to have one straw more put on our back than we 
were bearing, seemed the height of cruelty ; when millions of 
our sons were in the field, and the government was strained 
to the extremest tension, and every man's heart was per- 
petually in his mouth, amidst blood, and graves, and battles 
and sorrows — then, I will not say that there were technical 
wrongs inflicted on this country by our brethren across the 
water ; but there was the cold, chilling shadow of unsympa- 
thizing hearts thrown over us ; and there was a broken rela- 
tion of comity; and if ever a nation might have said, "We 
now have five hundred thousand veteran men in the field, 
and we have an abundance of ships of war afloat, and we will 
vindicate ourselves on the sea and land," this nation might 
have said it. But what did the conscience and heart and 
intelligence of this nation do ? It laid down its wrongs and 
grievances at the feet of well-appointed arbiters, and said, 
" Let us not settle our rights : judge you between us." And 
in the work of that sublime arbitration I think you mark one 
. of the progresses of this world. lb bore witness not only that 
England and America had settled difficulties without war, 
but that the time had come when force must go under, the 
conscience being in the ascendant, and that we were begin- 
ning a new era on a higher plane. 

Nor need I point out how, recently, after the first efferves- 
cence of the feeling of horror which filled the community at 
the barbarities on a neighboring island, against whose cruel- 
ties and oppressions every sentiment of our souls is set, 
and shall be, with our strong sympathy for the men in the 
interior ; I need not tell you how, while we were standing up 
for their liberty, as against the cruelty, barbaric and hideous, 
which is inflicted upon them — how, when it came to the ques- 
tion of mar, the nation stopped, and balanced its reason on its 
conscience, and said, " Let not force arbitrate ; let this ques- 
tion be settled by men's higher nature if possible ; and only at 



HOW GOES TEE BATTLE 9 24? 

length and at last let us bring the sword into the settlement 
of this great question." It is a noble pause, it is a noble 
patience, and it argues the great growth of the superior facul- 
ties in this nation over the basilar, the inferior, the physical, 
the forceful faculties. 

But it may be said that while there may have been some 
advance in civic, commercial, social and political affairs, there 
are no such hopeful prospects in the direction of religious life. 
In reply to that, I declare that we see the subsidence of the 
animal passions in religion as much as anywhere else. Alas ! 
man striving to be religious has on every side presented, I 
think, the most piteous spectacle of time. Methinks if God 
weeps ever, it is when he beholds the poor staggering steps 
and faint endeavors which have been made, and are still be- 
ing made, by men to emancipate themselves from the animal, 
and to come up by their own evolution and patience and 
power into the state of the angel. To cease being physical 
and to become spiritual, as a drama — often as a comedy, but 
more often as a tragedy — has been going on for thousands of 
years. We have seen how, directly or indirectly, men have 
been forced to their religion by fear ; how, when they had 
once come under the yoke and bondage of the priest and the 
government, they were maintained in their religion by the 
sword ; and what wastes, what cruelties, there have been, no 
man can tell — not until the pictorial judgment comes, and 
we stand looking down through the past of history to see the 
line of mourners, of martyrs, of murdered ones, of mothers 
and children, of the long crowd that have suffered because 
the devil of force entered into the church and dominated re- 
ligion. Eot till then shall we ever have any conception of 
what the world has gone through in this respect. 

Now, has there been a lighting up ? Has there been prog- 
ress ? Has this infernal devil been in any manner exorcised? 
Has he so far been exorcised that the church lies, at last, 
wallowing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, and wait- 
ing for the final sentence, " Depart out of her "? I hold that 
more and more is religion discussed and controversies are 
carried on with regard to it, not as a dynastic element, but as 
an individual condition. The conception of the church as 



248 BOW GOES THE BATTLE % 

an organized power has been the curse of Christendom — with 
your liberty I say it. I declare that while religion has been 
full of justice, while it has been a plenary humanity, while it 
has been God's benison to this world, the framework and 
enginery which men have built up as a receptacle and a means 
by which the religious spirit should exert itself, has been not 
only the world's curse but the world's desolation. It has 
been the spirit of religion that has always stood, saying, i( Let 
the captive go ! " It has been the institutions of religion 
that have been conservative, and that have said, " Pause, 
calculate, hold back." It has been the spirit of religion that 
has said to laboring-men, "Ye are free!" it has been the 
mitred priest, it has been the glittering and organized church, 
that has stood in state panoply, and said, " Obey — obedience 
is better than sacrifice." It has been the spirit of the Bible 
to open prison-doors, and to bring forth captives ; but the 
captives of the last two thousand years have found their way 
towards liberty blocked up with ramparts ; and as they have 
drawn near to them, they have found that these ramparts 
themselves were made of piled-up Bibles ; and out from the 
port-holes have been rammed ecclesiastical cannon. Tire, 
desolation and destruction have come from churches and 
the ecclesiastical use of Bibles to keep men in oppression, 
and to hold them down like beasts of burden. 

Now, I say it is a sign of great hope that this vast enginery 
and exterior machinery, partly state and partly church, 
which has borne authority by which to oppress and dom- 
inate men, is toppling to its downfall. Do you call this 
the decay of religious institutions throughout the world ? 
Decay ! it is God's plow ripping up old pasture-sod, and get- 
ting ready to sow the seeds of righteousness. It is such decay 
as spring loves, by which all previous growths have rotted 
and gone to miasm, and have returned to assist in producing 
a new, a better and a more wholesome growth. 

But still further, I remark that the discussions that are 
going on, aside from this dynastic revolution on the subject 
of religion, if looked at from a large philosophical standpoint, 
will show that men are no longer regarding religion as a dy- 
nastic power, nor as a scholastic, technical and intellectual 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE ? 249 

system. They will shov/ that the world's thought or the 
world's mind is running toward religion as a vital force 
rather than as an organized intellection. As a means of 
education and of reformation, it is adapting itself to the ab- 
solute wants of mankind, and is daily growing in importance. 
Keligion is a great power, out o% which cunning hands had 
stolen from heaven the celestial fire, that the altar of a pre- 
tended religion might be the means of welding chains and 
forging swords and spears to oppress men with. This is all 
past ; and now men are beginning to ask, " What can the 
Spirit of love manifested by the sacrifice of Christ do for us ?" 
What can it do for the poor ? What can it do for all the 
crying wants of mankind? There is a growing tendency to 
unity of feeling, therefore, for justice. So soon as religion 
becomes love and benevolence, you cannot keep men apart. 

You shall put on the same fire a stick of hickory, a stick 
of oak, a stick of pine, a stick of maple, a stick of mahogany, 
and a stick of ebony ; and as long as they He in cold juxtaposi- 
tion each one will retain its nature, as oak, or pine, or maple, 
or what not ; but once kindle a fire under them, and they will 
all begin to burn ; and, burning, they will take on the form 
of flame ; and in the flame there will be neither pine, nor 
maple, nor oak, but a common fire. 

All over the world, so long as religion consisted of dead 
institutions, or dead institutions pretended to be religion ; so 
long as priests walked up and down the earth claiming su- 
pernal power and professing to wield it ; so long as men 
fought for abstractions, and called abstract doctrines religion, 
or held them up as indispen^ble to religion — so long there 
could be no unity ; the sticks lay dead in the old fire-place, 
or on the altar ; but just as soon as the concurrent feelings 
of mankind begin jointly to look upon religion as love to God 
and love to man — just as soon as the common feeling is good- 
will — the sticks will begin to burn ; and the moment they 
begin to burn, nothing in God's universe can stop their com- 
ing together ; and this feeling is that which is forging 
unity. 

I know there are many who mourn, just now, over the re- 
actions of religion, and the tendencies of science. I am not 



250 HOW GOES THE BATTLE t 

one of thein. I see nothing to regret. There is, no doubt, a 
reaction of religion as represented by organizations and forms 
and ceremonies ; there is very likely a falling off in religion 
so far as its ecclesiastical machinery is concerned ; hut I would 
as soon cry because the leaves drop off from the white oak in 
spring as to cry for that. , There are, however, those who 
know religion only in its arbitrary and external delineations ; 
and I do not wonder that they mourn. If I were a working- 
man, to-day, in Germany or in France ; if I were a working- 
man in Italy or Spain, where the Papal rule has been 
predominant ; if I had only the intelligence which God has 
given me, only the natural instincts of manhood, and only 
the yearnings of an uncultured human heart, and I dwelt a 
poor man in those countries, I should be an infidel. My 
heart would revolt at what is imposed on men there as 
religion. If you interpret the New Testament so that it 
shall lead to the treading down of the poor ; so that it shall 
sanction tyranny ; so that it shall recognize no religion except 
that which the priest gives ; so that individualism is discour- 
aged ; so that personal liberty is denied ; so that all aspira- 
tions and generous sentiments in the human soul are crushed 
out ; so that every inspiration of truth and justice and purity 
is trampled upon — if you interpret the New Testament thus, 
I do not wonder that men reject it. I htfnor men who tread 
under foot that which claims to be religion when it is nothing 
but the offspring of the devil in the guise of an angel of light. 
But if you call the spirit of those men who are seeking for 
a knowledge of the moral government of God over this 
world ; of those men who rejoicingly find that there is a 
revelation of God in the physical globe besides that of 
the letter, which is worth reading ; of those who believe 
that there is a disclosure of the divine method and will in 
the unfolding of human society, which it is well to under- 
stand — not casting away the history of the ancients so far as 
it is good ; -of those who believe that there is a revelation 
going on all the time, everywhere, and that it behooves each 
large and generous man who feels the need of manhood and 
immortality to have an eye and an ear open to every source of 
information — if you call that spirit a spirit of infidelity, then 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 251 

I am an infidel, and I would to God. that you were too ! Nay, 
I take it that, while there have been transitional periods, that 
while there have been incidental and temporary reactions 
from various causes, and while there has been much to be 
deprecated and combated, yet there has been a steady ad- 
vance upward. The general tone of conscience among 
scientific men is in the right direction. They are committing 
themselves to the ground that truth is to be received when 
the evidences are present, no matter where it leads a man. I 
am willing to accept the issue on that ground. I am willing 
to rest my faith in Christianity upon it. For I declare taat 
you shall find no delineation of man's character, no exposi- 
tion of man's relations, nothing which shows how the human 
soul may grow up from an animal into a man in Christ Jesus, 
no presentation of the reasons why one may hope to live be- 
yond the dark horizon of death, no representation of the way 
in which we may supplement our conscious weakness by the 
power of the Everlasting, like the Gospel. I put the cross of 
Christ, when it is stripped of its fabulous meanings, when it 
is divested of its crooked philosophy, when it is merely a 
symbol manifesting to the world the precious truth that God 
does not govern to destroy, but would rather suffer than 
make suffering — I put the cross of Christ, under such cir- 
cumstances, against anything and everything else. Give me 
Christ, give me Calvary, give me the Gospel, and I am not 
afraid to face the world, and say, " Try it with your alembic, 
try it with your mathematics, try it with your spy-glass, try 
it with your microscope, try it as you please, and in the 
end you will find that it is the wisdom of God and the power 
of God unto salvation. 

It is said by religious technicalists of our day that this 
preaching religion as a power rather than as a doctrine is a 
sentimental philanthropy instead of a Gospel. What was it, 
then, that the angels sang when they announced the coming 
of Christ? 

" Peace on earth, good will to men." 

The old theologue turns round, and says, "Go back to 
heaven, you sentimental singers." When the Master stood 
in Nazareth, and declared the Scripture to be fulfilled in re- 



252 HOW GOES THE BATTLE ? 

spect to himself, what was it that constituted the fulfillment 

of Scripture in his case ? 

"Jesus returned in the power of the spirit into Galilee: and 
there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. 
And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all. And he 
came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as his cus- 
tom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood 
up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the 
prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the 
place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; he hath sent 
me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, 
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised." 

Oh, what sentimentalism is this ! Where is the doctrine 
of decrees, of election and of fore-ordination ? There is noth- 
ing in this but sentiment ! 

" When John had heard m the prison the works of Christ, he sent 
two of his disciples, and said unto him, Art thou he that should come, 
or do we look for another? Jesus answered, and said unto them, Go 
and show John again those things which ye do hear and see." 

He said nothing to them about the Catechism, or Con- 
fessions of Faith, or anything of that sort. He said : 

"Go and show John again those things which you do hear and 
see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers 
are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor 
have the Gospel preached to them." 

Was Christ a mere sentimentalist, that we can afford to 
make such unworthy flings ? 

When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the 
holy angels with him, and before him shall be gathered all 
nations, what shall be the test by which he will judge men ? 
Will he say to them, " Dost thou believe in the tri-personality 
of the Godhead?" Will he say, "Dost thou believe in the 
doctrinal divinity of Christ ?" Will he say, " Dost thou be- 
lieve in the vicarious suffering of Christ ? " In the 25th 
chapter of Matthew it is declared what the test question shall 
be. 

"Then shall the King say unto them on his r'ght hand, Come, ye 
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 
foundation of the world : for I was a hungered, and ye gave mo meat ; 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me 
in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was 
in prison and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE f 253 

saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered and fed thee, or thirsty 
and gave thee drink ? When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, 
or naked and clothed thee ? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prisoo, 
and came unto thee? Aud the King shall answer and say unto them, 
Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of 
the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 

Behind the poorest soul that trembles in poverty on the face 
of the globe stands the heart of the Everlasting God, saying, 
i ' Deal by this man as you please, but remember that you deal 
so by me." And it is this philanthropy, this sympathy, this 
direct, potential force of religion, as a vital influence, trans- 
forming the human soul, that is characterizing modern 
preaching, and modifying technical religion ; and if this is 
sentimentalism, it is the sentimentalism of the Lord Jesus 
Christ and of heaven ; and I glory in it. 

The kingdom of heaven is suffering violence. The great 
battle is going on between the lower and the upper man- 
hood — between the power of the flesh and selfishness, and the 
power of the Spirit and true beneficence ; and though all the 
signs of the times measured by hours, may, perhaps, give no 
comfort, yet measured by hundreds and thousands of years 
they show the way in which the conflict is to end. More 
and more the forces of mischief are being crowded off from 
the field ; and may God again perform a great miracle, and 
command the sun of time to stand still till the armies of the 
Lord shall have driven away the last Philistine, and raised the 
brotherhood of common love, regenerated in the flesh, and 
made powerful by the Spirit of God. 



254 HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON*. 

Lord God of our fathers, we rejoice that we may come to thee, 
and plead thy goodness to thy servants of old, and refresh our faith 
and confidence in thee by remembrance of the patriarchs, of the 
prophets, of the apostles and of the martyrs, whom thou hast de- 
fended in life, or whom, if they have been overcome or thrown down 
by misfortune, thou hast made to live a thousand fold more by their 
trouble than by their life. Thou art the same God that walked in the 
East, and awaked men in the early civilization. Thou art the same 
God that hath ruled through all the confusion of nations, still educing 
good from evil. Thou art the same yesterday, to-day and forever, 
unchangeably wise, and unchangeably good. Thou art seeking, 
through a thousand channels which we know not of, thy great and 
glorious purpose of the final development of holiness in the race. 

We rejoice that thou hast made thyself so far known that We now 
look no longer with doubt toward thee, but with confidence, as we 
look toward the sunrise. Thou, O Sun of Righteousness, hast arisen, 
and art ascending higher, and wilt ascend till thou shalt stand in full- 
orbed glory in mid-heaven, to shine a thousand years upon the earth. 
Our hope, our faith of mankind, is not in them but in thee, and in 
them through thee. We look upon the history of the race, long in 
reality, but short in comparison with all that is to be, so little drawn 
out and made known; and we find that much is not revealed to us 
because we are incompetent to understand the elements by which it 
must be revealed; and we wait, trustful and hopeful, for the time 
when thou shalt think it expedient to reveal it to us. 

Now we render thee thanks for all the bounty and mercy of the 
year past, to us and to all the nations of the world. We are called 
hither by our Chief Magistrate, by the Governor of the State in 
which we dwell, and by our own welcome desires, that together we 
may as a people give thanks to God for all his service of bounty and. 
mercy. Thou hast indeed caused it to rain, not blood, but plenteous 
drops of mercy. Though thou hast smitten somewhat among thy 
people, yet how sparing have been thy judgments ! How small has 
been the ravage of disease! How hast thou hushed, rather than per- 
mitted civil discord ! With what bountif ulness hast thou crowned 
the labor of our hands! Everywhere, throughout this whole land, 
thou hast provided, in abundance, food for man and beast. We thank 
thee that even the disturbances which have interrupted the affairs of 
this nation have been disturbances so speedily to be repaired, and 
that the out-throwing of so many, the trouble of so many, bears no 
proportion to the bounty and goodness of the whole. 

We thank thee, O Lord our God, that thou hast, not only to us in 
our dwellings, but to us as a church, been so gracious. We thank thee 
that thou hast spared so many ; and that around the departing forms 
of those who are gone thou hast kindled such light of hope and 
gratitude. 

We thank thee that thou hast blessed this church during the year 
that is passed. We thank thee that thou hast vouchsafed to it so 
much of peace and prosperity. And we bese-ch of theo that thou 



HOW GOES THE BATTLE f 255 

wilt accept our thanksgiving for our own households; for all the 
mercies that have been showered upon them. Accept our thanks for 
all thy goodness to us as individuals. We are conscious that thou 
hast thought of us; that thou knowest each of us ; that thou knowest 
our frame ; and that thou hast been a Father, pitying his children. 

Now, for our own sakes, for the sake of our households, in behalf 
of the State in which we dwell, of this nation of which we are a 
part, of all the struggling nations on the globe, of mankind through- 
out the world, we desire, O Lord our God, to lift up our voice of 
thanksgiving and of praise. Thine is nature; and all her fruits are 
thy gifts. Thine are the seasons ; and whatever they have brought 
forth are of God. If throughout the earth, on the sea, in the forest, 
upon the plain, on the mountain-side, in the valley, and among all 
nations, there has been, during the year, a harvest Of joy and pros- 
perity, it is thy doing. And we pray that we, together with all who 
are joined with us, may remember this with gratitude, and render 
thanks to God for all his goodness. 

We commend ourselves to thy care in the time to come. Bless 
this nation. Hold it back from all violence. Keep it from intestine 
factions, and from corruption. Make all our magistrates pure, and 
the administration of justice prompt, so that men may understand 
the laws of the land, and respect them, and obey them. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt deliver us from marring our 
prosperity by a bad example. Let it be ours to stand before the 
nations of the earth with such self-restraint, with such patience to- 
ward those who are weak, with such conceptions of the nobility of 
the understanding and the reason rather than of power, that all men 
may love liberty, and may suspect and know the source from which 
our liberty comes— even that liberty with which Christ makes his 
people free. 

We pray for all that are enslaved in superstition, in ignorance, in 
bonds of any kind; for all that are exiled ; for ail that are suffering, 
whether justly for their sins, or for that which they could not avoid ; 
for all that are in prisons ; for all that are in hospitals ; for all that 
have no homes to-day; for all for whom no fire is lighted; for all 
whose table doth not bear bounty but starvation. 

We beseech of thee, O God, that thou wilt look upon all classes 
and conditions of men. May our hands be open and our hearts warm 
to succor those who need our help. We pray that while we live we 
may serve thee; and when we can do no more service, may we not 
tarry as exiles on frigid soil : may we begin again with a new spring, 
to bud and blossom in a better existence. 

And to thy name shall be the praise forever and forever. Amen. 



256 HOW GOES THE BATTLE % 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Ous Father, we pray for thy "blessing upon the word spokeD 
Give us grateful hearts as we look into the tendencies of the history 
of things in the world. Thou God of thy people, thou Shepherd of 
those who wander in the wilderness — thou wilt guide us in all the un- 
certain ways in which we are called to walk, and art guiding us. Into 
thy hand we commit the helm. Why should we he burdened and 
anxious with care ? Thou art the Leader, and we will follow thee. 
We know thy heart. We know that its nature is to love. We know 
that thy love is a love which is willing to suffer. We know that all 
doles and charities without love are worthless as sounding brass and 
a tinkling cymbal. We ask for that love that works the regeneration 
of the soiil, purit\ r , sweetness, all forms of power, and that rays it- 
self out, so that, as flowers are a thousand times larger by their 
fragrance than by their form, we may be larger by our manhood 
than by our personality. And grant that for all the blessings which 
we have received and are receiving at thy hands, we may be thankful 
on earth, and more thankful in thy heavenly kingdom. We ask it 
through riches of grace in our dear Lord. Amen, 



THE NATURE OE CHRIST. 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 



•' Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto 
his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in 
things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the 
people. For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is 
able to succor them that are tempted." — Heb. ii. 17, 18. 

" Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we 
may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." — Heb. 
iv. 16. 



From the time that theology received from the Greek 
mind a philosophic and systematic form, there has been, as 
compared with the sacred Scriptures, a total change of the 
point of view in which Christ is presented, if not universally, 
yet to a very great extent. The whole force of controversy 
has been to fix the place, the title, and the nature of Christ. 

This is a dynastic idea. I do not say that it ought not to 
be sought out in any degree ; but I do say that it is not in 
accordance with the structure and comprehensive aim of the 
New Testament ; and it is not using the facts or revelations 
of the New Testament as they were originally used, and as 
they were designed to be used. It is something outside of 
the purposes of those facts or revelations. 

The genius of the New Testament is to present, in Jesus, 
the most attractive and winning view of God, to inspire men 
with a deep sense of the divine sympathy and helpfulness ; 
and to draw men to Christ as the One who can meet all 
their wants while living, when dying, and in the great life 

Sunday Morning, December 7, 1873. Lesson : Rev. v. Htmns (Plymouth Col- 
lection) : Nob. 217, 296, 454. 



260 THE NATURE OF CHBIST. 

beyond. Over these three great circuits which the imagina- 
tion makes—life, death, and eternity — Christ is represented 
as having dominion ; and he is presented to men in such 
aspects as tend, according to the laws of the human soul, to 
draw them toward him in confidence, in love, and in an 
obedience which works by love. It is, therefore, as Teach- 
er, and Guide, and Brother, and Saviour ; it is as Shepherd, 
and Physician, and Deliverer; it is as a Mediator, a Fore- 
runner, and a Solicitor in court, that he is familiarly repre- 
sented. He is sometimes, also — though seldom in compari- 
son with other representations — represented as a Judge or a 
Vindicator. The force of the representations of the gospels, 
and of the laws which have sprung from the gospels, is to 
present Christ as so seeking the highest ends of human life, 
and so aiming at the noblest developments of character in 
men, that every man who feels degraded, bound, overcome 
by evil, shall also feel, " Here is my Succor ; here is my Rem- 
edy for that which is wrong ; here is my Guide toward that 
which is right ; here is my Help in those great emergencie? 
for which human strength is vain." Living or dying, we are 
the Lord's — this is the spirit that was meant to be inculcated. 
Christ came, he said himself, not to condemn the world, 
but that the world through him might have life. 

" The Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save 
them." 

If, then, we take our stand at the point of view through 
which the Scriptures were developed, we shall remove, I 
think, many of the difficulties which embarrass the minds of 
men, and which prevent their making a personal and saving 
use of Jesus Christ as he is presented in the Scriptures. 

First, the identification of the Lord Jesus Christ with the 
human race has been a fertile theme of comment, of criti- 
cism and of skepticism. Many have objected to it as un- 
worthy any true conception of the divine nature. 

Now, it was not the purpose of the New Testament to 
undertake to show us the whole nature of God, and to give 
us the elements by which we could judge abstractly as to 
what was and what was not fitting. We are limited in our 
judgment of the divine nature by the elements of our own 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 261 

being ; for that which is not in some sense represented in ns 
we can have no conception of. The immutable principles of 
truth, of honor, of justice, of love, and of mercy, in human 
nature, furnish us the materials by which we are enabled to 
judge of the divine nature. Is it not, then, worthy of our 
conception of God, that he should seek to win the race to 
confidence in him ? and is there a better way for him to do it 
than by the identifying of himself with the race ? 

When Christ wished to do his kindest works he did not 
stand afar off, saying, "Be this done, and be that done." 
He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the 
town, and healed him. He drew near to those whom he 
wished to bless, and touched them. He laid his hands upon 
them. And that which fell out in the individual instances 
of Christ's life was the thing which was done in regard to the 
whole scheme of Christ's appearing. If God spake to men 
not from afar off by the word of mouth, or intermediately 
through great natural laws ; if he sent his Son into the world 
to bring men, in their conditions, and according to their lan- 
guage, according to their modes of understanding, to a true 
notion of what the divine disposition and purpose were, was 
not that the best way in which to win their confidence ? If 
this is so, then there cannot be a method conceived of by 
which the human race can be more won to confidence than 
by the incarnation of Jesus Christ. 

If you look, in the light of an abstract divine propriety, 
at the whole history which is given in the gospels of the in- 
carnation of Christ, you will reach one sort of result ; but if 
you look at it from the side of the human mind and of hu- 
man want, which is the side that is presented in the New 
Testament, another and an entirely different view will be 
arrived at. We are not put into possession of those materials 
by which God, standing in the midst of his moral govern- 
ment, universal and all-glorious, can be inspected by us, ex- 
cept in one particular — namely, in regard to what will do 
good to a race that is so low as this is and has been. Looked 
at from that point of view, would it not be divine beneficence, 
would it not stimulate human emotion, would it not tend to 
draw men toward God, if he should conduct his mission and 



262 THE NATURE OF CUBIST. 

ministry upon earth so that men would feel that they could 
interpret his nature by the experience of their own ? Would 
not that have the effect to win men back to him ? 

Let me illustrate in another way. What is that which is 
most becoming in woman — what, but that she should dwell 
wi'h her kindred? What, but that she should should sepa- 
rate herself from that which is rude and coarse ? What, but 
that all those sweeter virtues which refinement breeds should 
blossom from her perpetually ? We think, of her as the child 
in the cradle ; as the daughter at home ; as the maiden sought 
or won ; as the young bride ; and as the matron. All these 
elements enter into our conception of the dignity and beauty 
of woman. If, therefore, you were to ask, What is her 
sphere ? and what are her functions ? every one instinctively 
would say that her sphere and'her functions were those of 
moral elevation, of refinement, and of intellectual culture. 
Every one would say that she was born to make home bright 
and beautiful. And yet, when that great concussion came 
that seemed likely to rend the continent from East to West ; 
when a million men in the North were tramping southward, 
and a million men in the South were tramping northward, 
and all was rude warfare ; when men were gathered from 
every side of humanity, good and bad, mingled and fighting 
together under the flag, where on earth could you have found 
more dirt, more blood, more confusion, or more rudeness 
than in the hospitals outlying the edges of the battle-fields ? 
And yet, woman walked there — an angel of light and mercy. 
Many and many a poor soldier, the child of Christian parents, 
dying, was led by woman's ministration, under those adverse 
circumstances, from the very borders of hell to the very 
heights of faith and hope and belief in the> Lord Jesus Christ. 
There, in the place most unlikely, in the last place you would 
have spoken of as the true sphere of woman — there woman 
reaped a glory that shall never die so long as there are annals 
of this land. And so long as there are annals of our dear 
old fatherland, Elorence Nightingale's name will be remem- 
bered. There will never be any who will forget that it was in 
circumstances of humiliation, and rudeness, and confusion, 
circumstances where there was everything which was most 



THE NATURE OF CUEIST. 263 

repellent to taste and refinement, that she stood to relieve suf- 
fering. 

Now, when you think of the Lord Jesus Christ, if, with 
the Greeks, you project some great crystal scheme of govern- 
ment, and conceive of him as administering ib ; if you form, 
in the stithy of your imagination, an ideal of a perfect God, 
ruling over men, and bring that ideal into this world, do you 
not leave God at an inaccessible height above the heart of 
man ? But if you say, " He was born of woman, he grew 
from childhood to manhood, and at thirty years of age he 
became a teacher," will not that, I ask, be the best thing that 
you could do, in case the object of this revelation is to win 
men ? If the design is to inspire the human race with confi- 
dence and sympathy toward their Maker and their Judge, 
will not this be the very thing above all others that will do 
it ? Bring the divine nature from the vast cloudy sphere 
beyond into this world, transmute it into the conditions in 
which we live, and which limit our understanding, and con- 
ceive of Jehovah as Immanuel, God with us, and you do that 
which is better calculated than anything else to present the 
conception of God so that men's hearts shall take hold of 
him. For that which we need, after all, is a tendril which 
shall unite us to God. Our God must not be to us as a storm 
nor as fire, if we are to cling to him. The storm and the 
fire may make men afraid of evil, but they never will call 
forth men's love. 

You might, by the north wind, throw the convolvulus, 
the morning-glory, the queen of flowers, prostrate along the 
ground ; but it is only jvhen the warm sun gives it leave that 
it twines upward, about that which is to support it, and 
blesses it a thousand fold by its efflorescence all day long. 
The terrors of the Lord may dissuade men from evil ; but it 
is the warm shining of the heart of God that brings men 
toward his goodness and toward him. 

This view of Christ meets both theories of men's origin. 
If men are descended from a higher plane by the fall of their 
ancestors, this view of God seeking their recuperation is emi- 
nently fitting ; or, if men are a race emerging from a lower 
plane, and seeking a spiritual condition, it is equally fitting. 



264 THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 

In either case, what they want is a succoring God; and such 
was Jesus Christ as presented to the world in his incarnation. 

Secondly, it gives added force to the simple narrative of 
Christ's life if we look at it from the point of view which we 
have been considering — namely, such a teaching as shall lead 
men to confidence in and communion with God. If you ask 
what is becoming in a dramatic God, or in an ideal Sovereign, 
you will get one result, and it will be a human result. If 
you ask what would be likely to inspire the human family 
with a profound sense of God's sympathy with mankind, and 
of his helpfulness toward them, would not that be the very 
result of the presentation of Christ's life ? Look at it as the 
life of One who came to win men, and does it not touch the 
universal chords of sympathy ? He was born of a woman ; 
and that cloudy wonder, the mystery of the mother-heart, 
(which no poet ever described, but which was known to Ka- 
phael, half woman as he was, and which was, though imper- 
fectly, yet marvelously, expressed in the Sistine Madonna) 
that wonder enveloped him. As the mother, holding her 
child, looks with a vague reverence upon it, so our Saviour was 
looked upon by his mother when he was a child in her arms. 
Therefore, there is not a child on the globe that has not had 
a Fore-runner. 

As a child, Christ grew in stature and in knowledge. 
And that is as much a revelation as any other. Nor does it 
detract from a true and proper conception of divinity. For 
if one would make himself like unto his brethren he should 
begin where they began, and in everything but sin should rise 
with them, step by step, all the way up. 

Following Christ through his childhood, we find that he 
was subject to his parents. Unquestionably he participated 
in their industries, and lived a working man, in a great 
northern province crowded with a population which in- 
cluded all manner of foreign elements, under the dominion 
of a foreign scepter. There, in the midst of the distresses of 
the people — and they were exceedingly great — he grew up a 
working man ; and there is nothing in the history or experi- 
ence of the great mass of mankind who are working men that 
he is not fitted to sympathize with. 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 265 

Has not this already touched a universal chord ? Has it 
not even made skepticism admire it ? Men who reject as 
history the details of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ ; men 
who set aside his miracles and many of his words, will not let 
die the character which he has lived and impressed upon the 
world's thought and the world's imagination. 

One of the most affecting things that I know of is the 
way in which men deal with this " fiction," as they call it. 
They take the life of Christ, and say that it is mythical ; 
or, they say that it is the life of an extraordinary man, of a 
genius, but not of a divine Being ; and yet, it is a life that 
believer and unbeliever alike will not let die. There are all 
sorts of men in the various schools, who are saying of the 
nature and character which are attributed to Christ, " This is 
so wonderful a nature and character that the world would be 
impoverished if we were to lose it." Such impressions have 
been produced by the circumstances in which Christ lived 
among men. 

Thirdly, the miracles of Christ, looked at from the same 
point of view, have been very much perverted by discussions, 
and by not being looked at along the line in which they were 
meant to play. They were simply charities. They were, to 
be sure, alleged to have a certain influence among an abject 
and superstitious-minded people, but Christ himself under- 
valued them as moral evidence. They were alternative, as 
evidence. " If you will not believe me for my own sake," he 
says, " believe me for my works' sake." He held that the 
radiant presentation of a divine nature ought to carry its own 
evidence ; that when he appeared in speech, in conduct, in 
affluent affection, he was himself his own best evidence ; and 
yet, if they, by reason of obtuseness, could not believe in him 
otherwise, he called upon them to believe in him for the sake 
of his miracles. That would be better than nothing. But 
he discouraged and dissuaded men from seeking after miracles 
or signs. The miracles of Christ were, almost all of them, 
mere acts of benevolence. He was poor ; he had neither 
money nor raiment to give; and yet there was suffering 
around about him, and he relieved it. The miracles of 
Christ were never wrought in an ostentatious way. Never 



266 THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 

were they wrought for the purpose of exalting himself. 
They were not employed where arguments failed, to carry 
men away by superstitious enthusiasm. Multitudes re- 
sorted to him for help — the sick, the blind, the deaf, lepers, 
all kinds of unfortunate people ; and miracles were his means 
of bestowing charity upon them. No hospital had he to 
which he could send them ; he was his own hospital. No 
retinue or army had he to send out among the masses of the 
Palestinian land. His own hand and voice were his universal 
instruments of mercy. His miracles were his general acts of 
kindness. As laid down in the gospel they represent the 
heart of God. And what an error is often committed in re- 
gard to the beneficent deeds of the Kedeemer and Saviour of 
the world, as to the purposes for which they were performed ! 
They were never performed for his own sake. If there are 
apparent exceptions, there are no real ones. For instance, at 
the baptism of Christ, the sound of a voice and the descent 
of a dove were not his own miracles. They were imposed 
upon him. And the greatest of all wonders which were 
wrought, in its dramatic beauty — the Transfiguration — was as 
much a miracle of mercy as the miracle of the loaves and 
fishes. The disciples had lately been driven out of Galilee, 
and they had come to Jerusalem, and their faith needed re- 
suscitation — as also did his own, since he was in the form of 
man, not only, but had the experiences of a man ; and as 
they stood upon the Mount, he was, as it were, lifted up before 
them. He seemed to them to be in the midst of a luminous 
atmosphere ; and heavenly visitants were communing with 
him. Thus they were strengthened and prepared for a re- 
mote period when he should be crucified and buried out of 
their sight. It was intended that there should be a witchery 
and magic connected with this event which should hold them 
to their faith in spite of the lack of outward evidence. The 
ministration thus to the higher spiritual nature of these dis- 
ciples was as bread and wine to the lower bodily wants of 
men. 

Now, if you adopt the philosophical view, and discuss the 
peculiarities of Christ's miracles purely from the standpoint 
of nature, you will reach certain results ; but if you suppose 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 267 

that they will be the results contemplated by the New Tes- 
tament, you are mistaken. 

For instance, I reach forth my hand and draw a drowning 
man out of the water. Some one, hearing of it, and wishing 
to give a philosophical explanation of the act, takes a hand, 
and dissects it, and paints it. First, he paints the whole 
hand ; then underneath he paints each finger separately ; 
then below he paints all the muscles ; and then he writes a 
little treatise on the structure and adaptation of the hand ; 
and then he says, " There is my interpretation of that act." 
But it is not a dissected hand that the man thinks of, whom I 
seized at the risk of my life and rescued from the boiling 
flood. It does not occur to him that the hand that saved him 
was composed of bone, or muscle, or skin, or anything else. 
It was ivhat was done by the hand that interpreted itself to 
him, and that was the all-important thing. 

Miracles discussed philosophically are out of the sphere of 
Christian experience. What we want to know, along the line 
of Christ's miraculous deeds, is, that they all aimed at one 
thing — namely, the opening up of a more bountiful concep- 
tion of divine sympathy than could have been developed 
under any other circumstances. Viewed in that light they 
are a potential evidence, not so much of the power to which 
they have almost always been referred, but of the inner heart 
of Jesus : they are a powerful development of the divine 
bounty and sympathy and kindness ; and who has the heart 
to dispute them on that line ? 

Looked at, also, from the same point of view, — namely, 
that of the relations of Christ to the world for the sake of 
developing in men confidence in God and sympathy with him 
— I remark that the Saviour's suffering and death will receive 
new light. Everything becomes involved and difficult and 
inoperative the moment you discuss the history of Christ from 
the material and dynastic sides. Why did Christ suffer ? If 
you say, in reply, " That he might redeem men from sin," 
you have said the whole ; and just so soon as you begin to go 
back and ask, "How did his suffering redeem men from 
death ?" you are wandering right away from the heart of 
Christ to the cold Greek philosophical view of him. 



268 THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 

If you bring to me the tidings that my mother is dead 
she who bore me, and hovered over all my infant days, and 
tenderly loved me to the last, yon open the flood-gates of sym- 
pathy in my soul. But suppose a physician comes to me and 
sits down by my side, and says, " You understand, my young 
friend, that there are, in the human frame a variety of systems 
— the vascular system, the bony system, the muscular system, 
the nervous system ; you understand that there are vital or- 
gans — the stomach, the liver, the heart, the brain : now, if you 
will listen, I will explain to you, in a philosophical manner, 
the causes of your mother's death. I will show you the way 
in which the blood ceased to -circulate in her veins." He 
wants to read me an anatomical lecture on the nature of the 
reasons of my mother's death ! It I have wandered away 
from home and friends, and my mother is dead, and you 
come to break the intelligence to me, I think you will leave 
out of your message everything except the announcement 
of her death and her last words. You will say, if such be 
the fact, " She prayed for you, and she died exclaiming, 
' My son ! my son !' " And there is not a human heart 
that would not feel the power of a simple statement like this. 

Tell me that he who is to be my Judge bowed his head 
and came into my condition ; tell me that he was not 
ashamed to call men his brethren ; tell me that, being in the 
form of God, and thinking it not robbery to be equal with 
God, he made himself of no reputation, and took upon him 
the form of a servant, that he might minister to men ; tell 
me ^that he was tried and tempted in all points like as we 
are, and yet without sin, that he might know how to succor 
those who were in trial and temptation ; tell me that he died 
that his death might .be a memorial of grace to men, and that 
he might expound to human understandings the nature of 
God — tell me these things, and I am satisfied. " Greater 
love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for 
his friends," — tell me what that means. It is declared that 
Christ gave his life for the world ; what is the meaning of 
that ? Away with your barbaric notions ! Away with the 
idea of marshalled forces ! Away with the thought of impe- 
rial coercions ! That which I derive from the fragrance and 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST- 269 

sweetness of that magnificent sacrifice which was made in 
Christ's death is sufficient for me. All that I want to know 
is that the heart of God is a heart that yearns for men — that 
it is a paternal heart by which the universe is to be lifted up 
and saved. I do not stop to ask what is the relation of the 
suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ to divine law ; neither do I 
stop to ask what its relation is to the moral government of 
the universe ; nor do I stop to ask what is its relation to the 
teaching of the Old Testament. All these things may have 
their proper place in an outside work ; but to discuss them and 
make them a part of Gospel truths is to go not only out of, 
but against, the example and spirit of the New Testament ; 
for that which the sufferings and death of Christ mean to you 
and to me is that God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son to die for it, and that in this sacrifice we 
have the manifestation, not only of the power, but of the 
disposition of God to save us from animalism, from degrada- 
tion, from guilt, and from sin that breeds guilt, and to 
bring us into a knowledge of the spiritual life, and make 
us sons of God. 

Therefore, was there ever such a perversion as that by 
which theology has blunted the sensibilities and frozen the 
instincts of men, and presented to them a sort of Greek 
philosophy of the atonement of Christ Jesus — by which that 
sort of mechanical balancing of forces which men have 
called atonement, atonement, atonement, has been urged 
upon men — when that which the human heart wanted and 
Christ and the New Testament gave was not a substantive 
noun, meaning some arrangement or plan, but the truth 
of a living, personal Saviour ? I can say of these scho- 
lastic discussions, " They have taken away my Lord, and 
I know not where they have laid him." But yes, I do 
know where they have laid him : they have laid him under 
the dry bones of philosophy. They have covered him 
up with slavish systems which impose upon men the perform- 
ance of certain duties, the observance of given forms and 
ceremonies, and obedience to certain rules, as the conditions 
of their salvation. Acts, acts, acts, have been prescribed for 
men, when all that they wanted to know was that there was 



270 THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 

a stream flowing out from under the throne of God, and for- 
ever carrying to men life-giving influences. This stream, 
sent forth out of the center of God's throne, is the impulse 
of the centuries. It is the wisdom of God and the power 
of God unto salvation to every man that believes. 

So accepted, the sufferings of Christ, his death, his resur- 
rection and glory, are powers ; but the moment you turn 
them into a philosophy they are dead and dry, and they 
crackle under the pot of discussion until all its contents are 
evaporated and gone. 

I remark, once more, that the views of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, his ascension, his glorification, and his reigning state 
in heaven, as they are presented in the Scriptures, are exceed- 
ingly comforting, and exert an amazing influence ; but when 
they are presented by close analysis, by a philosophical state- 
ment, they lose all their power, and shake down upon us no 
fruit whatever. 

Christ is our Forerunner; this we can form some con- 
ception of. He is the first-fruits of them that slept ; this, 
while it brings no special idea to us, to the Jew brought most 
joyous associations. He is our Mediator; he is our Inter- 
cessor : — we instinctively feel the force of the helpfulness of 
these figures. 

Now, you will spoil it all if you go into a complete analy- 
sis, and specify everything that you can imagine of a fore- 
runner, and tell what he does do and what he does not do ; 
if you undertake to draw an exact parallel between the first- 
fruits of them that slept and the first-fruits of the harvests of 
the Jews; if you undertake to dissect and regulate the offices 
of a mediator between God and man, or a mediator of the 
new covenant ; if you undertake to describe the functions of 
an intercessor. All the aroma will evaporate if you go thus 
into detail. No : if you tell me that Christ died for men, and 
that he now lives in heaven for them ; that he is their Inter- 
cessor nearto God, the Source of all power ; that he thinks 
of them and governs them ; that he is bringing many sons 
and daughters home to glory ; that he is our Forerunner in 
the world beyond ; that he is our Solicitor in court — if you 
tell me these things, I am comforted ; but the more you un- 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 271 

dertake to refine these metaphors, and reduce them to exacti- 
tude, the more you take away the comfort which might be 
derived from them. Let them stand in their simplicity, if you 
would have them powerful in their influence upon the im- 
agination, the heart and the life. 

If you take a cluster of flowers just as they are, with the 
dew upon them, how exquisite they are ! but you tarnish them 
by just so much as you meddle with them. Every one who 
dissects a flower must make up his mind to lose it. 

That sweetest flower of heaven, from which exhales per- 
fume forever and forever ; that dearest and noblest concep- 
tion that the human imagination ever gathered out of father 
and mother, out of leader and benefactor, out of shepherd 
and protector, out of companion and brother and friend ; all 
that ever was gracious in government — these various elements, 
rising together, are an interpretation, in a kind of large and 
vague way, to the imagination, and through the imagination 
to the heart, that there is, at the center of universal author- 
ity toward which we are all going, One who cares for us ; One 
who bears our burdens ; One who guides our career ; One 
who hears our cry ; and One, though he does not interpret 
himself to us, who will at last make it plain that all things 
have worked together for the good of those that have trusted 
in him. 

Now, a man, as a philosopher, may preach Christ from be- 
ginning to end, and yet his people may grow in grace and in 
the knowledge of Christ ; but that is not the general result of 
such preaching. The way is to preach Christ, and to aim at 
preaching Christ, so that the souls of the people shall be built 
up in the Lord Jesus Christ ; and it is exactly in this way 
that I have desired to preach Christ among you. 

Oh, my brethren, we are not far from the end of our jour- 
ney. ' It matters very little what this world and time have for 
us. The other world is near to us, and it matters everything 
how we shall land there. We have our burdens, our crosses, 
our poignant sorrows, sickness and death, embarrassments, 
bankruptcy, trials, and if not outward scourgings yet inward 
scourgings. We are not exempt from the great lot of man- 
kiud ; and we go crying often with prone heads. We are 



272 THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 

like bulrushes before the wind, bowed down to the very earth. 
And is it a comfort for you to know that there is a God who 
thinks of you ? to know that there is One who is crying out 
in the silence, if you could only by your spiritual hearing 
listen, saying, " Come boldly to the throne of grace, and ob- 
tain mercy and help in time of need " ? 

throne of iron, from which have been launched terrible 
lightnings and thunders that have daunted men ! throne 
of crystal, that has coldly thrown out beams upon the intellect 
of mankind ! throne of mystery, around about which have 
been clouds and darkness !— throne of Grace, where He sits 
regnant who was my brother, who has tasted of my lot, who 
knows my trouble, my sorrow, my yearning and longing for 
immortality ! Jesus, crowned, not for thine own glory, 
but with power of love for the emancipation of all struggling 
spirits ! — thou art my God — my God! 

And is he your God? Ah, yes ! I beseech of everyone who 
has any trouble, everyone who needs help, to try the help of 
God given through Jesus in faith and trust. You cannot please 
him better. Come, lay down your anxiety and your strivings ; 
lift up your heart, and believe that He who has guided his 
people like a flock will guide you, and perfect you, and bring 
you home to immortality. 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We rejoice to believe, our heavenly Father, that there are other 
homes, higher mansions, a nobler parentage, higher and serener 
occupations, and a purer life than those which befall them who are 
born into this world. Here we are tossed upon many currents and 
waves. Here we are surrounded with a few things that overbear us. 
We are biased by our sympathy. We are drawn hither and thither, 
partly through ignorance, and partly through unchecked desires. We 
are filled with weakness where we should be strong, and with strength 
where we should be weak. We scarcely carry our souls with any 
balance, or constancy, or high aim or valiant endeavor. When we 
look upon our life we are discontented with it. How vast is our strife 
for how little ! How eager, how earnest we are, and what expenditure 
of pain and of joy we make for things that perish in the using! How 
much of our lif e wastes itself and falls away uselessly, as a river in 
the wilderness ! How much of our experience is at cross-purposes ! 
Our understanding is divided. Our conscience is agafcnst our conduct. 
Yearnings we have, but no answer. There is no response to our ques- 
tions. 

When we look upon ourselves there is . nothing that can make ue 
proud, but much that makes us humble. It is only when we look at 
thee and at the declaration of thy purposes that we begin to take 
heart. For, if we are the children of God, and are at school now, 
learning those lessons which shall be clearly known in immortality; 
if thou art working in us to will and to do of thy good pleasure ; if thou 
art guiding us through this wilderness into the promised land, there 
to know as we are known, and to be as sons of God, as kings and 
priests unto thee — then we look up; and in hope we live, by hope 
we are saved. But from that which we see we have very little 
comfort. The whole world around about us is not enough for a soul 
that has been touched with seraphic fire. The things which from day 
to day present themselves to our senses and to our tastes leave hunger 
behind. It is only the bread which thou givest that satisfies hunger; 
it is only the water which thou givest that quenches thirst. Grant, 
we pray thee, soul-food to us to-day. Bring every one of us near to 
the Lord Jesus Christ. May we discern Him whom God in his infinite 
mercy sent to make known to us the innermost depths of the divine 
disposition, and to make manifest to us the government of God in its 
relations to our elevation and salvation. And we pray that thou wilt 
bring the presence of Christ clearly to the apprehension of everyone 
of us, so that we may look upon him as our sacrifice, living, and 
dying, and living again forever for us. May we be able to hear him 
say to us, by name, Thou art mine. May we feel that there is in the 
heart of Jesus a place for every experience, for every want of every 
human soul that would work upward ; and that he is without beauty 
and without comeliness only to those who turn their back upon him. 

Grant, we pray thee, that every wandering, wavering, unstable 
heart may respond to his call, and find in him a Shepherd, and that con- 
trol by which it shall be saved from that which seeks its destruction, 



274 



THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 



and shall be kept unto salvation. Grant that all who are in distress of 
mind may hear him saying, Come unto me, and I will give you rest. 
Grant that every one who is consciously weak and sick of soul may 
know him as a Physician, ministering to those who need him rather 
than to those who need him not. May every one have faith in Christ 
over against his utmost necessities, as the AU-in-All, the Light, the 
Food, the Way, the Door, the Glory, the Immortality. 

We pray, O Lord Jesus, that thou wilt be that Comforter by which 
thou hast promised to draw near to every one who needs consolation, 
to throw the light of thy love upon all the scenes of life, and to cheer 
those who are in darkness. Thou that didst teach thy servants of old 
to sing hymns and make prayers at night while they were fast in the 
stocks, grant that any who find themselves in prison and in midnight 
darkness may be able still to lift up their voices and sing hymns and 
psalms to God. Thou that didst open the prison doors for the deliver- 
ance of thy servants, grant that any who are immured and shut up 
unto themselves may find the hand of God leading them out of dark- 
ness and doubt and trouble. Grant, we pray thee, that any who are 
cast out, and who feel themselves to be alone, may find thee coming 
to them, as thou didst go to him whom the synagogue cast out, and 
reveal thyself unto them to their joy and to their instruction. 

O Lord, may there be in us a higher understanding, a more tender 
heart, and a conscience that is willing to be guided aright. This 
morning may the word of thy truth fall, not as rain upon the sand, 
but as rain upon a fruitful garden. 

Grant thy blessing upon those who are strangers in our midst; 
upon those whose hearts go far back to friends that they have left be- 
hind them. Wilt thou care for their dear ones of whom they are 
thinking, and take care of them. 

Be near to those who are in perplexity and doubt respecting their 
business. Guide them in secular affairs. Be present in every house- 
hold where there is trouble, to give consolation, to rebuke, to cheer, 
to purify. Draw near to all those, this day, who attempt to make 
known to such as are around about them the truth as it is in Christ 
Jesus. May they be taught by thy Spirit in their souls. May they 
have a living interpretation of thy Word. May they be able to go to 
their classes and say, Behold what the Lord hath done for me; He 
will do the same for you. 

May the wanderers be brought back. May the outcasts be re- 
stored. May the truth of Christ be sweet and winning to all on every 
side. 

Bless, we p ay thee, all the churches in this city. Bless their 
pastors. Grant that they may be strengthened by thee to sow and 
to reai), and that there may be gathered, abundantly, of their labors 
into the garden of the Lord. And we pray that thou wilt bless the 
churches of "every denomination. Bring them more and more to- 
gether in the Spirit of God and of humanity. 

We pray for the nation. Be pleased to bless the President of these 
United States, and all who are united with him in authority. We 
pray that he may be guided in times critical and perilous so that 
thy name shall be honored, and the welfare not only of thi* 






THE NATURE OF CHRIST. 275 

nation, but of all nations, shall be promoted. And may that time 
which is beginning to dawn come speedily unto the nations of the 
earth, everywhere, when they shall feel that the welfare of one is the 
welfare of all. Grant, we pray thee, that nations may feel that they 
are members one of another, seeking the things which are for the 
benefit of the whole world. 

Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done upon earth as it is hi 
heaven. We ask it for Christ's sake. Amen. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we pray that thy blessing may rest upon the truth 
as it has been spoken. Grant that it may be winnowed, so that only 
the pure grain shall be sown in the hearts of thy people. Draw near 
to us, that we may be able to draw near to thee. Awaken in us again 
the old love for a better life. Draw us, we beseech of thee, by that 
confidence, by tbat trust, which thou dost inspire in thy true children. 
O thou that takest away the sins of the world, to every one who is bent 
with burdens, to every one who is in the prison-house of trouble, and 
to every one who is guilty before thee, give the assurance that their 
sins are forsaken and forgiven. Thou that art the strength of thy 
people, give consciously to every one a portion of that strength. 
Thou that hast infinite rest in thyself, give peace to all who are 
troubled on earth. And when, at last, through storm, through 
struggle, over the wave, through the sea, we reach tbat land which is 
unwet with tears, we will, with one united acclaim of joy, ascribe to 
thee, Jehovah, that sittest on the throne, praise, dominion, honor, 
glory, power, and ecstacy and constancy of love, forever and forever. 
Amen. 



WORKING, AND WAITING. 



WORKING AND WAITING. 



M Having done all, to stand."— Eph. vi. 13. 



There have been views of divine sovereignty and of 
the nature of divine holiness such as led men, through ven- 
eration, to spiritual indolence. Much has been said about 
the danger of touching God's ark with unhallowed hands ; 
and men have thought, because they must not touch the ark, 
that they had no right to take hold of the cart itself, and 
help draw it. Much has been said about invading the sphere 
of divine sovereignty, and about our presumption in meddling 
with the things which concern God rather than man. Em- 
phasis has also been put upon the divine ordering of things — 
upon decrees, along which, as along a turnpike, it is supposed 
that God has built up institutions and plans and purposes 
with which we are scrupulously to take heed that we do not 
unduly interfere. 

But such views do not agree with the Scriptures, which 
vehemently enjoin men to strive to work out their own sal- 
vation, with great impetus, and with tumultuous emotion — 
with fear and trembling. Neither do they agree with the 
nature of the world which we are living in, and which never 
of itself evolves anything that is high and good. It is the 
leaven of intelligence that makes natural law of any account ; 
and the original globe would be yet chaotic, to all intents and 
purposes, if it were not that natural laws are ridden by hu- 
man intelligence. Nor do these views agree any better with 
the teachings of Providence. The whole history of God's 

Sunday Morning, December 14, 1873. Lesson : Psalm cxxxix. Hymns (Ply- 
mouth Collection) : Nos. 365. 433. 907. 



280 WORKING AND WAITING. 

work among men, whether in the old or in the new dispen- 
sation, lies along the line of a just and rational enterprise ; 
and any view of the divine nature, or of the divine govern- 
ment, or of the inferiority of human relationships to the one 
or the other, such as inspires men with quiescence or indo- 
lence, is most mischievous, and in the highest degree irra- 
tional. 

But, on the other hand, the whole economy of nature, the 
entire history of Christ's kingdom, tends toward strong de- 
sires, sagacious plannings, energetic enterprises, and most 
earnest expectancy. 

On this side there springs up, also, a corresponding dan- 
ger. As the want of a large consideration of the divine plan 
may lead men to indolence on the one hand, so in embracing 
the divine plan, and attempting to carry it forward, men 
may grow conceited, and may become impetuous and irra- 
tional in their zeal. Above all, when men sow with the ex- 
pectation of reaping, and do not reap speedily, they may grow 
discontented. When men engage in enterprises which are 
always building and never finished, they may grow impatient 
of their work. It is natural for men to expect to see the 
fruit of their labor. 

Now, both elements are to be combined. First, do all 
that you can ; work early ; work late ; work hard ; work in 
every direction in which you are called by the providence oi 
God to work ; and then, having done all, stand and wait. It 
is a great thing to know how to work ; it is also a great thing 
to know how to wait ; but it is a greater thing to know how 
to do both. 

Paul, in another relation, said that he knew how to 
abound, and how to suffer want. There are a great many 
persons who know half of this, but do not know the rest. 
There are many people who know how to abound, but do not 
know how to suffer want ; and there are many people whose 
training has taught them so that they know how to suffer 
want, but not so that they know how to abound. When 
they begin to abound, they show that they are not even ap- 
prentices in this particular. To know how to do one and the 
other — to know how to be up in prosperity, and \;hen, when 



WORKING AND WAITING. 281 

the rebound comes, to know just as well how to he down in 
adversity ; to know how to he rich and to he a man, and to 
know how to be poor and to be a man still — that is manhood 
with a witness. It is very easy for some persons to know how 
to be energetic and enterprising ; but they know also how to 
be irritable and impatient when energy and enterprise do not 
speedily bring the fruit which they are after. To know how 
to work, and to know just as well how to wait ; to have all the 
drive of enterprise, and besides, to have indomitable patience 
in waiting for the fruit of enterprise — this is to be a com- 
pleted man, a true workman of God. There is need, there- 
fore, of provision and of caution against the over-action of 
enterprise and expectation into impatience, into«discontent, 
and even into unbelief . 

There are some prime considerations which will help us 
in measuring out further the providence which is involved in 
this subject. 

First, in the material world, and in human society, there 
is a principle or scale of gradation in time — that is to say, 
different elements that are growing, different events that are 
taking place, require different measures, so far as time is con- 
cerned. Things do not happen alike in respect to the appli- 
cation of the cause and the production of the result. Every- 
thing is not like powder, where the explosion following the 
spark is so nearly instantaneous that the physical senses can- 
not mark any space between the one and the other. There 
is a very clear demarcation between causes by which they are 
longer and longer and longer in their operation before they 
produce their results. 

If you look at the seasons, you find that there are some 
things which, early in the spring, rush right up with the first 
relaxation of the winter, develop themselves, and come to an 
end. There are many things — for instance, the asters and 
the chrysanthemums — which grow all summer long, and do 
not look out with rosy blossoms upon you until just before 
the frost cuts them down. There are many things which 
grow all summer long, and which, when the winter finds 
them, have not done their duty, or at any rate their work ; 
and it is not until the end of another summer that they show 



282 WORKING AND WAITING. 

forth the nature that is in them. And then there are a great 
many things which neither in one year, nor in two years, nor 
in twenty years, show what they are. They require more 
time for their. development. You can grow a head of lettuce 
in the space of six weeks ; but you cannot grow a. hollyhock 
in less than two years ; and you cannot grow an oak tree in 
fifty years. Men have found that out in respect to a multi- 
tude of things in nature, and they never wonder at it, and 
are not curious about it. 

So, to come into the sphere of those things which are 
qualified by man's thought and enterprise, things that ar6 
simple, and that consist of single actions, may be done speed- 
ily ; but things which are in their nature complex, things 
which have respect to a higher element or relationship, are 
delayed in their accomplishment. Many of the best things 
which men have they besiege and take as we do fortified 
cities. A man can open and shut a door at once, but a man 
cannot take a journey at once. The simple drawing out of 
an organ-stop is very easy ; but it is not easy to know how to 
play on an organ after you have drawn out the stops. A 
child can do the one readily enough, but he can only do the 
other after years of practice. The complex nature of the 
thing to be done makes a difference as to the time that 
is required in the doing it. 

If you look through all the relations of men in business, 
if you examine their processes, you will distinguish this 
element of gradations of time ; and it is a very important 
element. 

Now, in a general way, the length of time between cause 
and effect has respect to two elements — first to complexity, 
and second to superiority. The nearer we come to the 
animal conditions of life, the shorter is the period which is 
required for the production of results. Those things which 
have the nearest relation to the flesh are always the most 
rapid in their evolution. The briefest space between voli- 
tion or exertion and result lies in the range of things which 
are lowest down in society and in man's experience. And as 
you go up, as human nature is expanded more and more, as 
it is developed on higher and higher planes, the results which 



WORKING AND WAITING. 283 

are sought, being complex, are delayed. To make an old- 
fashioned loom was not a very laborious thing ; one could 
almost hew it out with an ax ; but to make a power loom is 
a very different thing. No man can do that with one tool, 
nor with twenty. The -one could be built in a few days : the 
other requires months in which to be built. The difference 
lies in the greater convenience of the latter, in its complexi- 
ty, and in the excellence of the results which it is expected 
to work out. No man can build a Jacquard loom for weav- 
ing silk as easily as he would whittle out a bit of pine to stop 
the flow of cider from his barrel. The latter is a simple 
thing to do, and can be done quickly ; but the former, being 
complicated, requires more time. In proportion as things 
are complex, and work toward fine results, delay is character- 
istic of them. And that delay runs back through the life of 
the present generation, not only, but back of their life to that 
of other generations. 

A modern house can be run up between March and Octo- 
ber, so that people can go into it, and catch cold, and die ; a 
house now-a-days can be built quick ; but it has taken at 
least four thousand years of work to prepare for the building 
of such a house. All the discoveries in the use of timber- ; 
the various improvements in the manufacture of tools ; the 
knowledge of how to work iron, and convert it into steel ; 
the learning how glass might be made out of sand and alkali ; 
the multitudinous elements which have entered into the con- 
struction of that house — the world has gone in travail with 
these things for thousands of years. Now the workman rushes 
his materials together quickly ; but he could not have done it if 
it had not been for the thinking and planning and waiting of 
his ancestors in the ages that are past. The mechanical arts 
have grown slowly, and the later developments and applica- 
tions of them depend upon long reaches backward. 

The further we go away, then, from the animal toward 
the intellectual, the more complex are our thoughts, and our 
wants, and our processes ; and in civilization and education, 
whether intellectual or moral, the more complex the processes 
become, the longer is the duration between the cause and 
effect — that is, the larger the sphere of waiting becomes. 



284 WORKING AND WAITING. 

"When you want low things, common things, you can have 
them quick : but if you want high and good things, you must 
wait for them. That is the substantial doctrine. 

When, for instance, one attempts to do a thing which in- 
volves but a single action, or has but a single function, he 
can do it in a short time. . To learn the art of rifle-shooting 
demands some time. Learning to handle the piece ; learning 
steadiness of nerve ; learning how so to use the eye as to 
make it an instrument of accuracy — this cannot be done in 
an hour, nor a day. And yet, after all, it is a very simple 
thing. There are not many elements involved in it. If a 
man can learn it at all he can learn it in a little while. But 
learning a trade is a very different thing. A man can learn 
to shoot a rifle in a week or ten days ; but no man can learn 
a trade, that is worth learning, in a week or ten days, nor in 
a month, nor in a year — unless he is a double compound 
Yankee ! Learning a trade which is worth learning requires 
a great deal of time. 

Among trades, men can learn some of them very quick. 
It ought not to take a man a great while to become a good 
bricklayer ; but it does take a man a great while to become a 
good watchmaker. Where is the difference ? It is in the 
simplicity or complexity of the things handled. It is in the 
number of processes which have to be gone through with. 
The time required in either case depends upon the number of 
elements which are involved. I do not undervalue bricklay- 
ing ; it is a very useful occupation ; but considering the men- 
tal faculties which are called into play, considering the subtle 
questions to be determined, considering the minute touches 
of skill necessary, it is not to be mentioned in the same day 
with the building of a locomotive, or with the making of a 
compass, a quadrant, or any other complicated instrument of 
navigation. Certainly, it is not to be compared with the 
producing of such a thing as a watch. It is fineness, excel- 
lence, complexity, which makes the difference in the time 
which is required for the accomplishing of certain results. 

To throw a plank across a stream is not a very difficult 
task. Many a maiden has done that, and walked across, bare- 
foot, and seen her face reflected in the water below. It does 



WORKING AND WAITING. 285 

not take long for one to make a bridge, provided it is only a 
plank ; but how is it when it comes to building a stately 
structure such as that which is going up near this spot, and 
which ought to teach us a hundred lessons ? Can a man go 
down on one side forty or fifty feet, and on the other side 
eighty feet, in those imprisoned caissons, till the bottom rock 
is found, and place it, and fill ifc, and solidify it to the rock, 
and .superimpose upon it layer after layer of timber, and layer 
after layer of stone, and then, when the surface is reached, 
carry up the towers to the very summit of the arch — can he 
do that in a year, or in two years ? How many questions are 
involved in such an undertaking, with regard to the kinds of 
materials, and the modes of using them ! And then, by-and- 
by, when the foundation is completed, what care is taken in 
raising the superstructure ! One single wire is carried across 
on a boat, and taken to the top of the tower ; and, by instru- 
ments provided for the purpose, it is strained and tested as to 
its tensile power, and is put into its place. Then another 
wire comes to keep company with it, and is subjected to the 
same stress, and is laid alongside of its fellow. A third and 
a fourth are added, until a whole cable is made, every wire 
going through the same tests, and all of them being bound 
together voluminously. And this cable is only one. There 
are to be eight or ten cables precisely like this. Then come 
the suspension cords and the roadway. And when once the 
roadway is laid, how merrily the people go over it ! And 
when the workmen are finishing off the bridge, you say, 
" This thing was very nicely planned : how well they are do- 
ing it !" But who takes into account the underground work 
that preceded that, in the head of the engineer who thought 
it out of nothing ? Who takes into account the conceiving, 
the planning, the arranging, the calculations of amount and 
cost and strength of material ? That which is outside and 
visible is the least part of the work. 

The great work of a painter is inside of himself. Nobody 
sees that, because his picture is never half so good as his con- 
ception. The noblest thing that Beethoven ever wrote was 
not comparable to his thought. Oh ! what sermons I have 
preached in the solitude of my room ; but they always turned 



286 WORKING AND WAITING, 

out pale and poor when I got them off here. It is mind- 
work, after all, that is the great work. 

And when that magnificent bridge which will carry some- 
body's name to posterity shall have been done, and well 
done, and millions shall throng oyer it, and it shall unite 
these two great cities, carrying the people back and forth 
— who can imagine the thinkings, the waitings, the strokes, 
the cuttings and carvings, and the trades which have 
combined to make it possible — sinking it below the earth- 
quake's hand, and lifting it above the storm's reach ? It 
is the amount and the complexity, not only of matter but 
of mind, that have gone into a structure which determine the 
length or the shortness of the time required for its develop- 
ment. Complex things which are wrought quickly now-a- 
days are the result of long continued ancestral thinking. We 
are reaping the results of the inventions and discoveries of 
those who have gone before us, as the child gathers fruit from 
trees of his father's planting. If a man would have things 
which involve fine work from the inception to the end, he has 
to wait a great while for them. Things which are worth hav- 
ing cannot be acquired except through the lapse of time. It 
does not take long to get mushrooms ; but if I want Cedars 
of Lebanon or magnificent tropical trees to- ornament my 
grounds, I cannot bring them up as I can a toad-stool. They 
must have time at the root, time in the stem, time all over. 
Somebody must have patience to wait for them. Things 
which are voluminous, intricate, complex, superior, excellent 
in all their elements, demand time for their evolution. 

When Sir Christopher Wren died he was buried in St. 
Paul's Cathedral ; but I do not think it mattered whether he 
was buried there, whether he was laid in a country church- 
yard, whether he was left on the bare ground, or whether he 
was sunk in the ocean. On his tomb was inscribed, " If you 
ask, Where is his monument ? look about you." Not only the 
grand cathedral in which he lay entombed, but all London was 
his monument. He did more in his day to beautify that city 
than all the other architects of a hundred years. Therefore it 
was most fitting that the inscription of his burial-place should 
declare that wherever men looked they saw what he had done. 



WORKING AND WAITING. 287 

Men work ; their whole life is a series of earnest labors ; 
and when they die they seem to themselves to have done very 
little ; for no man makes any account of the secondary in- 
fluences which he exerts ; no man makes any account of what 
he stirs other people up to do ; no man makes any account of 
the work that he commences, but that is to be finished by 
future generations. Men very seldom understand that that 
which they begin, and which they carry forward to a certain 
point, will inevitably fall into other hands and be consum- 
mated by them. There are multitudes of men whose minds 
have been the leaven of the age in which they lived; but 
dying they seem to have done very little. They do not own 
houses and lands ; they have no bank stock. They seem not 
to have done much ; but after all, dying, dead, their works 
follow them ; and men who come after them say, " The whole 
magnitude of these results fbwed from them." 

When Livingston made the civil code of Louisiana little 
had he to show for his life ; but every year since has been, 
and every age in the future will be, a witness to the wisdom 
of that code, and to the fact that in making it he became a 
benefactor to the world. Very little had Washington done 
when he lay at Valley Forge. What did he do ? Did he 
fight a battle? Did he besiege a city ? Did he capture an 
army ? Did he go through anything that showed him to be 
very efficient ? With bloody-footed soldiers he waited. His 
power of waiting, as we now look back upon it, his patience, 
his indomitable purpose that could stand still and wait, is 
among the illustrious results of that man's life. 

Still more striking is the fact that the higher the result on 
the moral scale, the longer is the time which is required f 01 
attaining it. When you work in things which have respect 
to matter, when you labor with reference to the material 
structure of society, there is a gradation of time required ac- 
cording to cause and effect ; according to the complexity of 
the thing which is to be wrought out ; according to that part 
of nature which it addresses itself to and serves ; but when 
you turn from that to the mind itself, and not the body, you 
will find that still more emphatically this principle is evinced 
and carried out. The intellect in its relations to influences 






288 WORKING AND WAITING. 

which consist of matter can be developed a great deal fastei 
than the philosophical intellect, or that part of the under- 
standing which takes cognizance of the invisible relations of 
things. A man is an observer first, and a philosopher after- 
wards. A man learns to see, a great deal sooner than he 
learns to reason. Reason is high in the scale, and it takes a 
long time to come to it. It takes longer still to come to the 
co-operation and harmonization with each other of a number 
of superior faculties. 

The slowest thing that can be done in this world is the 
building up of moral character. Many persons think that 
there is a lightning-like process by which men's characters can 
be built up by the Holy Ghost. They think that when God 
by his Spirit strikes the soul he knocks the old nature out of 
it ; and that then the man rises up a new creature in Christ 
Jesus. If you regard this as a mere figure, there is some 
truth in it ; but if you literalize it, and test it scientifically, 
and say that God changes man's nature in an instant as by a 
flash of lightning, it is not true. It is as far from the anal- 
ogy of nature as it can possibly be. For there is no work 
that is so important, and none that is so high, as the cre- 
ation of manhood in Christ Jesus ; and there is no work that 
takes so much time ; there is no work that is so slow ; and 
there is no work in which men are tempted to be so impa- 
tient. • 

Before I make any further application of this subject, let 
me mention a few things which without full consideration 
tend to impatience and discouragement of mind. 

One reason why men are impatient and discouraged is 
that, not having had this view which I am attempting to open 
up, of the different plans on which operations go forward, 
and of the different allotments of time according to their sim- 
plicity or complexity, and according to their inferiority or 
superiority, they have brought in notions obtained from lower 
planes of action, and employed them to measure the results 
of higher planes of action. Because men succeed in produc- 
ing results rapidly in matters of time, in things which involve 
the management of physical elements, they seem to think 
that the continued application of the same processes which 



WORKING AND WAITING. 289 

they have been employing is all that is necessary to enable 
them to produce results rapidly in other spheres. 

A man is very successful in business. He is quick, 
prompt. He plans well, and executes well. He has amassed 
property. He is looked up to and trusted. He is a good 
man. He goes into the church. He is elected superintend- 
ent of the Sunday-school. He says, "I have longed to be in 
such a position, that I might show what can be done in this 
field by the right kind of management. H you would organ- 
ize your missionary work as we do our business, you would 
accomplish a great deal more." So he sets about organizing 
his school, a-b-c like — in an alphabetic way; he puts on 
force ; and he undertakes to drive things through with enter- 
prise. 

Now, there are some points of analogy between conduct- 
ing a school and conducting a business ; but when a man 
attempts to treat human beings — little Arabs and their sisters 
— as though they were subject to the same coercive changes 
that material objects are, as though they could be treated as 
bales of cotton or woolen goods are ; if he attempts to or- 
ganize a school as he organizes things, he will have little ex- 
amples right about him of how different dealing with matter 
is from dealing with persons. Although order, enterprise, 
force, and other like qualities unquestionably have a very im- 
portant relation to progress and to ultimate success in every 
department, yet when a man has to do with the highest ele- 
ments — those which pertain to the human soul — he will find 
that he has a task before him which cannot be accomplished 
to-day, nor to-morrow, nor this week, nor this year. 

The work of soul-unfolding is slow because it is so volu- 
minous ; it is slow because it belongs to so high a sphere ; it 
is slow because it requires the operation of both human and 
divine influences. It is a work which cannot be concentrated. 
And in its very nature it must develop slowly. 

Therefore, by a wrong estimate of things, by measuring 
the elements of the higher sphere by rules which belong to 
the lower, men may come to feel as though they had a right 
to be impatient. 

Many a thrifty, vigorous, frugal, enterprising housewife, 



290 woRKma and waiting. 

being married, carries order into a slatternly man's house- 
hold. The servants are obedient, the table shines, and every- 
thing is bright as a new-coined dollar. Her success is com- 
plete, and she puts on airs, and sets herself up as a critic of 
those who do not get along as well as she does. So it goes 
on, till, by and by, she is a mother, with one child, with two 
children, with three children, with five children, with seven 
children. Besides looking after her husband's wants she has 
seven precious little urchins to take care of. Each one has 
its peculiar organization. Some take after her, some after the 
father, aud some after somebody behind them both. She has 
infinite complexities to deal with. Things do not go on quite 
so systematically as they did. There is not quite such regu- 
larity about the house as there used to be. She does not 
know what the matter is. She says, " I once made every- 
thing walls ; but now all things seem to be tangled up, and I 
cannot get along well." When it was matter that you had to 
deal with you found it easy to manage it ; but now that you 
are dealing with mind you find that that is not matter. If 
there be any materialists here who think that mind is matter, 
I wish they could teach school a little while, or take care of 
children. If they would not have a demonstration that mind 
and matter are very different things, then I am mistaken. 

So, too, a false notion of divine gifts, of their operation, 
and of their continuity, misleads people. There are many 
who have such an indiscrimi nate idea of God's greatness and 
mercy, and of his mode of applying them, that they feel that 
if they are only prepared, that if they only have faith, that 
if they only pray enough, by and by God will let fly that cre- 
tive fiat which will do the thing that they wish done in- 
stantly ; and they are waiting for God's blessing on the sup- 
position that nothing more is required of them. 

A man sitting on his balcony says, " It is not for me to 
make summer. What am I, farmer as I am, that I should 
undertake to dictate to God ? My business is to humble my- 
self, and pray." So he prays that he may have Indian corn 
on one side of his farm, and wheat on another side, and a 
good orchard on another side. After praying, and praying, 
and praying, he looks up ; but he sees no wheat, and no corn, 



WORKING AND WAITING. 291 

and no apples ; and he wonders what it is that hinders God 
from answering his prayers. He does not know what to 
think. 

Well now, how long do you think a man would have to 
wait after simply praying for corn, and wheat, and fruit, be- 
fore he would get them, if he did not understand that when 
God works he works by natural laws ; and that the most com- 
prehensive form of natural law is that which is wrapped up in 
the human organization itself ? Men who want harvests 
must work for them and wait for them. Men recognize this 
in material things, but they think it is different in spiritual 
things. They say, "It holds good in the realm of matter, 
but not in the moral kingdom of God." My friends, God's 
moral kingdom is the same as his natural kingdom. There 
is no distinction between these two kingdoms except that 
which you make by words. They are parts of a grand unit. 
They are one and the same thing. Nature begins in inor- 
ganic matter, and rises up through sentient being to the 
throne of God itself. It is one stupendous whole. The same 
analogical laws run through it from top to bottom. The same 
great divine processes and methods belong to every part of it. 
And that God who will not make the wilderness to bud and 
blossom as the rose without industry will not cause flowers and 
fruits to spring up in the arid soul of a man without industry. 

If, therefore, you are attempting to bring up your children 
by prayer, I tell you, you are like a man who goes out to 
hunt, and says, "The great power of hunting lies in the 
bow," and does not carry any arrows with him, and twangs at 
a deer, but does not hurt him ; or, you are like a man who 
goes out, and says, H The power of hunting lies in the arrow," 
but does not carry any bow, so that when he pulls the arrow 
over his hand down it goes at his feet and does not kill any- 
thing. For successful hunting there must be a good bow, and 
a good arrow, and a good man behind them both. If these 
conditions are complied with you will hit, if there be any hit 
in you. Says the divine Word, " Work out your own salva- 
tion with fear and trembling" — there is the arrow ; ft for it 
is God that worketh in you" — there is the bow. The two 
things are necessary. 



292 WORKING AND WAITING. 

You who engage in moral enterprises must think, must 
plan, must bring energetic organization and co-operation to 
your work ; and then you must have that which all high work 
requires — patience. If God could wait thousands of years be- 
fore he made the earth, and if he could wait through two, 
four, six thousand years before the race was evolved, and if he 
can wait through ages in the future before the race shall be 
developed to their highest destiny, cannot we wait the short 
time which is needful for the accomplishment of the lower 
and inferior ends which we are seeking in this life ? 

Then there is the temperamental element which comes in 
here. You have probably noticed that a man who is very ab- 
dominal, who is great-headed, who is sleepy-eyed, who has 
collopy cheeks, and who is blest all the way down to his feet, 
generally has a great deal of patience. He is patient because 
his nerves are so far under the fat that nothing can stir them 
up. Everybody is patient when he is asleep or dead. And 
you will have noticed that when another man whose nerves 
are reticulated all over him, and who is sensitive to every par- 
ticle of dust that flies, is perpetually on fire, and has very 
little patience, this large, slow man says, "My friend, pa- 
tience is a great virtue ;" and this little, fiery man is irritated 
at the idea that he should be talked to thus ; and he says, 
" Patience ? yes, patience ! an angel would not be patient 
where I am." I do not think he is capable of judging of this 
quality ; he is not much acquainted with patience ; there is 
this temperamental element to be considered. 

Men are organized so that they feel acutely and deeply 
and impetuously ; and they are often in a hurry ; and when 
they are hindered they blame men, and providence, and God 
himself. They curse God and die. If all that men think and 
feel were set down to them as if they had done it, there would 
be a great deal of swearing, a great many objurgations, and a 
great deal of censuring providence charged against them. 
Some men are impatient because they are subject to different 
influences ; because the forces which operate upon them are 
forever changing ; because their efforts in this or that direc- 
tion are scattered ; because the results of their labor are de- 
laved. 



WORKING AND WAITING. 293 

If a stone-mason should take a large block of stone to hew 
it into a cube of six feet, and strike three blows a day on it, 
how long would it take him to prepare it for a building ? And 
suppose he were the only one that was working on that build- 
ing, how long would it take him to complete it ? Men work 
so in moral and spiritual things, and then they marvel that the 
result is not accomplished speedily. 

Now, there are three applications that I wish to make of 
this subject — first, to self-culture, second, to household cult- 
ure, and third, to society culture. 

Men are discouraged, frequently, because they make so 
little progress in the use of their lives for the development of 
Christian experience and Christian character. To be a Chris- 
tian means the development and education of one's whole self. 
It means being a perfect man in one's relations to men on 
the material globe. Paul prayed that men's bodies, as well 
as their spirits and souls, might be preserved blameless. To 
be a Christian means to be a man in things that touch our 
relations to men in this life, as well as in things which touch 
our relations to God and angels in the other life. 

There is no greater work on earth than that of developing 
everything in man ; of bringing it into harmony; of holding it 
back from wrong doing, and pushing it forward to posi- 
tive excellences. He builds a great thing who builds a pyra- 
mid ; .but he builds a greater thing who builds a character. 
He has done a noble thing who has erected a temple ; but ye 
are temples of the Holy Ghost, and in the future you will be 
transcendently nobler than St. Peter's, St. Paul's, or any 
domed structure in the world. It is a great thing for a man 
to paint fine pictures, and carve noble statues ; but Michael 
Angelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel are not to be com- 
pared with the frescoes that are being painted in that won- 
drous hall, the human soul. He who knows how to live a 
life sweet, beautiful, harmonious, lovely, of good report, and 
knows how to store his whole mind and soul with noble 
thoughts and heroic traits of excellence, builds and adorns 
as no artist ever did in matter. 

And this mental and spiritual development is not a work 
of to-day nor of to-morrow : it is a slow work ; and men 



294 WORKING AND WAITING. 

should not be discouraged because its results are so long de- 
layed. They ought not, because it is slow, to hold back, and 
say, "I am not responsible." Work on, and work harder to 
the end of life ; put on all your force ; and do not be impa- 
tient because, after you have done all, you have so little to 
show for it. Having done all, stand and wait. 

If, then, any of you are trying to break an unruly tongue, 
do not give up. Try on, and be not impatient. If that tem- 
per which is quick and fiery is not yet subdued, do not cease 
your effort. Do not say, "There is no use of my trying." 
Do all you can, and then wait ; again do all you can, and 
wait again ; try till the end of life, and still wait. Your try- 
ing and waiting are not in vain, as you will see by-and-by. 
There is another life besides this which you are going to live 
in. What you are doing here you will not know till you get 
there. In respect to this life you can form some judgment of 
what the results of your labors have been, but there is some- 
thing higher than that and more than that. 

This is a manifold life. We have manifold writers so made 
that though a man writes on but one sheet, what he writes 
goes down and impresses itself on many sheets besides. The 
difference is that when you write in the spirit you write with 
reference to two worlds. What you write, though you do not 
see it here, is magnified and glorified beyond; like a picture 
that being seen through a lens is greatly enlarged and beau- 
tified. 

Many and many a man who works against his temper- 
ament and against discouragements, and who works to no 
purpose, when he dies, and the all-revealing light of the res- 
urrection comes, will stand with mute surprise and amaze- 
ment to see what invisible influences were brought to bear 
upon him, and what he accomplished by his patience and 
fidelity ; nay, he will break out in adoration and joy at the 
thought of that God who did so much through him, when he 
seemed to himself to be doing so little. 

You are worse than you think you are ; you are better 
than you think you are. You are not doing half so much as 
you ought to be doing ; you are doing a thousand times more 
than you dream of. You are working for this life too exclu- 



WORKING AND WAITING. 295 

sively, but your work strikes through into the future life, and 
there is another significance given to it on the other side. 

Let no man, then, be discouraged. Let no man say, " It 
is useless for me to work." Persevere. Eternity is near at 
hand ; and eternity is long. That which you now behold is 
not the real : the real has something better than the eye can 
see, or the ear hear, or the hand handle. You are immortal ; 
you are spiritual; you are of God;, you are going back to 
God ; and that which is real to you is that which your senses 
cannot perceive. So do not despair. Hold to your purposes. 
Eaise your ambition. Lift your standard higher. "Work : it 
is God that is working in you. 

Then, in the household, do not be discouraged because all 
your work there seems to be in vain. It is not in vain. 
I know that oftentimes there is a sorrow that does not 
bleed, but yet aches. I know that there are fine, ex- 
quisite troubles that touch the very center of sentience and 
consciousness, that the lips cannot murmur, and that the 
thoughts almost refuse to bear. I know there are thousands 
of persons who live under a sense of condemnation all the 
time, and say, "I am discharging my duties to my children, 
oh, how poorly !" I know that many a father thinks, " I 
hold, it is true, a sort of outside relation to my children ; but 
oh, I have done so little for them !" Then there are instances 
in which parents have trouble with their children. One child 
has gone wrong, and you are waiting to bring him back. 
Another child has gone wrong, and it is all that you can do 
to endure the grief which he has caused you. There are also 
troubles which come from deformity, and from non-illumined 
understandings in your children. There are disfigured chil- 
dren ; there are fractious children ; there are disobedient chil- 
dren ; there are conniving children ; and I would not take 
away from you one stimulus of fidelity toward them ; but this 
I say : While you are doing good do not hurry God. Do not 
say, " He does not hear me ;" or, " My prayers are unan- 
swered.'' You do not know that. It is a long way that God 
travels when he comes with his best gifts ; and it does not 
matter much whether you get them on this side or on the 
other. 



296 WORKING AND WAITING, 

Oh, sorrowing father! oh, heart-broken mother! your 
child is a wreck ; and yet God, when you rise in the other 
life, may put that child in your arms, and say, " Your work 
saved her. You did not know it, but I did." Do not give 
up till the very end ; hold on till the last ; for God is mightier 
than you are ; and the best works are the slowest ; and the 
most precious things often come latest. 

To those, also, who are working upon society, let me say : 
You are not to grow impatient. You are not to hurry 
Providence. You are not to lift up exclamatory hands at 
God's delay. The work which Christian men essay when 
they attempt to do good in society is so vast and so far-reach- 
ing, its elements are so multitudinous, its relationships are so 
fine and so much above the level of ordinary apprehension, 
that no man should for one single moment indulge in impa- 
tience. 

You are a child of culture and of wealth. Your heroism 
has taken you from your father's house, and sent you South, 
among the ignorant and degraded remnants of the slave 
population, where you are an outcast from society ; and you 
have labored for months and for years ; and looking around 
you, you say, " I have not reaped enough to make it worth 
while to have undertaken this. " But do not give up. Stand ! 

I think the most affecting story that I ever heard, be- 
cause it is so nearly like Christ's, was that of a Christian man 
who went to the West India Islands to preach to the slaves. 
He found them so miserable, so hard-worked, so utterly ex- 
hausted, that when they came from the field he could not 
teach them anything. They would not listen to him. He 
was white, as their oppressors were. Finding that he could 
make no impression on them, he sold himself to their mas- 
ters, and became a slave, and was driven afield with them, 
and was fed on their poor fare, and was dressed as they were 
dressed, and was lashed as they were lashed, and was worked 
as they were worked. Thus he was enabled to gain their con- 
fidence and whisper the Gospel to them. He gathered them 
around him, and told them the glad tidings of salvation. He 
made himself like unio them, and suffered for their sake. 
And yet his work was so small that when he died it was 



WORKING AND WAITING. 297 

ecarcely enough, to be seen. That one history, which is the 
sublimest reproduction of the very spirit of the incarnation 
of God in Jesus Christ, had only just begun to sprout when 
he died. But it has been traveling out in one literature, and 
in another literature, and has gone on fructifying human in- 
telligence and purpose, and it will never die. As long as the 
human race lasts there will be men to tell that same story ; 
and the whole world will be sown with the precious seed of 
that single life, which seemed to this man, when he died, to 
have been thrown away — but which was not thrown away. 

If there are disheartened ministers (and there are) to 
whom my words will find their way, I fain would say some- 
thing to encourage them. I do not thank God so much be- 
cause I have the favor of men ; I do not thank God because 
men sometimes overpay me with admiration ; but I do thank 
God, from the bottom of my soul, and every day of my life, 
that my words carry comfort to people in obscurity ; that 
they go to the great working-classes ; that they reach the in- 
firm, the aged, the sick, those who are ready to perish. This 
is a blessing that I never can measure nor enough appreciate. 
And my words of this morning will go out to many a weary 
missionary in the frontier settlements ; to many a Christian 
man who has taken his fortune in his hand, and gone into a 
new land, and is trying to build up a school against many an 
obstacle, and is bearing witness for Christ among swearing 
and drinking and gambling men, and is standing in the midst 
of discouragements, ready to abandon his work. 0, never 
give up — never ! Die by the flag ! Do not surrender ! Stand 
to your work. And having done all, stand ! 

I send out the word of cheer, of hope and of consolation, 
north, south, east, west, to the islands of the sea, an*! among 
the groping heathen, to every man whom Christ has touched, 
and in whom the sense of immortality has begun to develop. 
Workers for God, and workers for man, you are essaying the 
greatest tasks that are possible for time. Do not think that 
your work is slow because the results are not near. Work 
cheerily ; and when you can no longer work by sight, work 
by faith. You can derive hope and encouragement from 
that which is not visible to the outward eye. 



298 WORKING AND WAITWe. 

A man wakes in the night, sick, and wants to send a mes- 
sage to his physician. He can find no light ; so he takes his 
pen and writes. Not being able to see the lines, his writing 
runs down-hill and up-hill, and is blurred here and there ; 
yet it is not the way the message is written, but that which is 
in it, that is important. And when it is finished, he de- 
spatches a servant with it, hoping that it will bring him the 
desired relief. There is a great deal of poor writing in the 
lives of men. So far as the visible results of their work are 
concerned they are very poor ; but it is for the Master ; and 
oh ! He who gave his Son to die for us — shall he not freely 
give us all things ? 

Enlarge your ideas of God's providence. Make the hori- 
zon of your faith broader. Fill the heavens full of the evi- 
dences of divine love. Eemember that nature is nothing but 
providence under another name ; remember that providence 
is God ; and remember that over all, through all, and in all, 
God is working, and that in him you live and move and have 
your being. The morning is God to me ; for it brings the 
Sun of Eighteousness. The evening is God to me ; for he 
made that as well as the morning to rejoice. Everywhere, in 
tears, in sorrow, in losses, in imprisonment, in chains, in 
degradation, yea, and in death itself, the child of God will 
find great victory. Then hold on to God ; follow in the steps 
of Jesus Christ, though they be in blood ; and when he shall 
appear you shall be like unto him. 



WORKING AND WAITING. 299 



• PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

Our Father, our wants are ever new, and they move in the same 
circle. We draw near to thee this morning. Thou knowest that the 
things which we outwardly perceive are but few and of small account. 
Our infirmities, the sins which spring from them, our impetuous 
natures, or our dull and laggard performance — these, which are hut 
the out breakings of the inward want— how often have we confessed 
them ! and yet, when we have confessed them, how little do we seem 
to have done ! Thou hast revealed to us the great inward kingdom of 
God which each of us is bearing; and we look within to see where are 
tbe pleasant streets, paved with gold; where are the gates of pearl; 
where are the precious stones that are in the battlements; and where 
are the sweetest and most blessed estates of mind which represent in 
us the power of God's dear Spirit. We behold a wilderness with but 
here and there a patch reclaimed ; and that which we have builded, 
as yet, for the most part, is crude and unshapely. Where are the 
gates of pearl ? Where are the carbuncles and the sapphires ? Where 
are the things most glorious to behold ? Above all, where are those 
chanting bands that come forth out of the gates to raise the song of 
praise to God ? We are poor within. Our souls are like wildernesses 
covered with rank growths, untrained, often evil; or they are as 
desert sands on which nothing will grow. That which is strong is 
often strong for evil, and that which is good is weaker than water. 
When we look at what we are, there is no life left in us ; nor have we 
any hope except that which comes from tbe thought that what we are 
we are underneath thine eye, and that the same hand which framed 
wondrously the body, yet more wondrously framed the soul, and 
that the same providence and long-waiting love and nourishing kind- 
ness which have sustained the globe thus far is content to bear a world 
full of such creatures as we are through many generations and ages; 
and to wait for their growth, and to labor for them, and to inspire 
them, aud to bring them into that state which shall be translation 
into a fairer clime, a better soil, and a higher culture. We turn away 
from ourselves. When we look this way we see no light, no comfort; 
but when we think of thee there is great joy ministered to us. As 
little children look up and wonder, and yet absolutely trust, and 
think their fathers to be greater than all heroes are ; so we look up 
and know that thou art the Lord of lords, that there is none beside 
thee, and that thou art not as we are, racketed about in this narrow 
sphere of time. The years rush by us, and are few, and we make 
haste; but thou dwellest in eternity; and in the endlessness and 
boundlessness of thine estate thou art not hurried. Thou canst afford 
to await those slow evolutions through generations which perplex 
men, and distract them. And we rejoice in that greatness, in that up- 
reach of being which so transcends every measure we have on earth. 
We rejoice that thou art from eternity and unto eternity. 

And now, O God, thou knowest how little we understand in saying 
it; but we have this thought which thou hast raised up in us, that go 
where we may, there is the wonder-working power of thy goodness, 
above us, within us, behind us, on, every side, beneath, everywhere, in 



300 WORKING AND WAITING. 

heaven, on earth, in time and through eternity. Thou triumphant One, 
by the power of thy wisdom and by the power of thy goodness thou 
art reigning. Overwhelming shall be thy final victory. Nothing that 
lifts itself against thee shall prosper. And in the end, all things shall 
have wrought together for thy glory, and for the good of thy 
creatures. And in this thought of God's greatness, of his merciful- 
ness, of his lovingness, of bis power and of his wisdom, we trust. We 
trust it as little children trust their mothers whom they do not half 
understand, but from whom come to them that sweet quiet and 
peace which are the balm to all its fears and all its troubles. And 
we do not trust only so far as we can analyze and divine: we trust 
according to the measure of our want; we trust according to the 
boundlessness of the misery that would come to us if we did not 
trust; we trust because the heavens are full of thee, and because all 
time is full of thee, in the greatness of thine invisibleness. Our souls 
go out unto thee. We worship thee ; and yet we do it with a trembling 
consciousness that we are in the twilight, and that we see thee as men 
see trees who are half cured of their blindness. We rejoice, O God, 
that thou art more than the human thought can conceive. What 
wouldst thou be to us as God if thou wert not other than anything we 
can think of? We rejoice in thine invisibleness and magnitude and 
incomprehensibleness. 

And we pray that we may not only stand afar off, thus admiring 
and rejoicing with trembling, but that we may have a sense of thy 
helpfulness. Every day, in its light and joy and bounty, may we not 
cease to give thanks. Over all our sorrows, over all our troubles, over 
all our labors, over all our disappointments, may there rise a sense of 
God's great goodness. And whatever complaint we make, may it in 
expressing itself begin with thanksgiving and end with thanksgiving. 
May we bind up our wounds with thanks, and stand in thy presence 
forevermore recognizing the goodness of God to us. 

And we pray that thou wilt draw near to those who are not able 
to rise to this argument of faith and trust; to those who lie like leaves 
upon the ground in autumn, shaken off from the tree where they 
grew, and helpless ; to those whom the wind blows hither and thither. 
Wilt thou, O God, sustain them against that which they feel that they 
cannot sustain themselves against. Raise up a wall of defense, we 
beseech of thee, for even the poorest and most needy of thy people. 
If they have fallen, if they are dying even, thou canst make their 
falling or dying appear in more glorious garniture than the garni- 
ture of the trees in summer. May they learn how to die unto Christ, 
and in Christ unto God, so as that when Christ shall appear they shall 
appear with him, and in him. 

We pray that thou wilt help all those who are under the pressure 
of bereavements, and sit in sadness and sorrow, and do not know how 
to turn themselves. As men whose lamp has gone out are in the dark- 
ness of familiar rooms, and grope, and know not how to find their 
way, so dost thou often by sorrow bewilder thy people ; and yet, speak 
unto them, that they may know that thou art present, and that they 
may rejoice even in the midst of great pain and suffering. 

We pray that thou wilt be with those who have troubles of heart: 



WORKING AND WAITING. 301 

who are necessitous ; whose better nature trembles and is afraid ; who 
every day look up with anxious thoughts. O Lord, thou that didst 
bear the cross, dost thou give them an empty cross? Has any soul 
ever come and taken thy cross, that thou wert not with it and beneath 
it, to bear it ? How many have taken that cross, as of dry and seasoned 
wood, and found it springing forth and clasping them with a thous- 
and tendrils and branches, every branch full of fruit, till they were 
embowered and embosomed in that which seemed to them a task or 
labor! Draw near, then, to all those who are in any trouble of mind, 
and so magnify thyself unto them that their trouble shall not be able 
to abide. "When quiet days come, then comes the dust that settles on 
the fairest things; but when rousing winds come, then comes cleans- 
ing, and the dust is blown away. Send, we beseech of thee, that 
wind from heaven which shall take away the dust of care and the 
grime of trouble from us, and give us clear skies at last between our 
souls and thine. 

We pray for all who are sick. Wilt thou be very gentle and 
gracious unto them, that they may walk the way of health in this 
life, or the way of health in the life which is to come, where there 
shall be no more sickness, nor pain, nor crying. 

We pray that thou wilt bless those who are struggling with 
poverty. May they be brought out from the bondage of those things 
which tend to drag men down to that which is carnal and visible. 
Sustain their faith who wrestle against cold and hunger and want. 
Be thou, O God, a providence to them, in this inclement season; and, 
amid so much outcasting of men, and so little of labor that brings 
warmth and food, open the hearts of all thy people s May men now 
remember the brotherhood that is between man and man. 

We pray that thou wilt guide all those who are heavy-laden ; who 
are bearing the heat and burden of the day. Open the way before 
them, and lead them in it; and may they be manly and courageous 
and patient to the end. 

We pray for our land. Be pleased to bless the President of these 
United States, and all who are joined with him in authority. Bless 
the Governors of the several States. Bless all the magistrates and 
judges of the people. And we pray that thou wilt grant that this 
nation may thrive not only in outward strength but in knowledge 
and in virtue. May this nation not be built up into great power 
for cruelty and oppression, but may it lead the way among the 
nations toward peace, toward virtue, toward justice, toward good- 
ness, toward the dawn of that day which is promised. Oh, for the un- 
locking of that casket in which is peace ! Thou hast promised good 
things, and time hath brought forth something of all thy promises; 
and yet, O Lord, behold how the earth still doth lie in darkness and 
in wickedness! Thou that didst brood the old chaos, art not thou 
brooding still ? and wilt thou not bring forth from out of darkness 
the morning light, and all the glory of the Lord, and that noble king- 
dom in the souls of men which thou hast come to establish? Let thy 
kingdom come, and thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. 
Amen. 



302 WORKING AND WAITING. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON". 

Our Father, we pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing on the 
word spoken. Dear Lord , make us patient. Rebuke our impatience. 
Make us realize our imperfections. We are so unworthy of our call- 
ing, we are so poor in the things in which thou desirest us to be rich, 
we are so lean where thou wouldst have us abound, the lives we are 
living are so miserable compared with those which thou hast com- 
manded us to live, that we deserve condemnation. Deliver us from 
wrangling as to who shall be first, and so from neglecting the work 
which thou hast given us to do. Inspire us to follow thee with all the 
earnestness of our nature. Turn and look on us, and make us ashamed 
of our short-comings. Behold us with those eyes whose power is in 
their love, and enable our innermost selves to triumph over our out- 
ward selves. Sustain, we beseech of thee, those who are borne down 
by discouragement. Take hold of us, every one, by thine omnipotent 
hand, and lead us till we stand in Zion and before God. And to thy 
name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen, 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME? 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME? 



" That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being 
fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of 
God."— Col. i. 10, 



This is to be interpreted by sucb passages as that of the 
27th verse : 

" To whom God would make known what is the riches of the 
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, 
the hope of glory." 

One of the passages fitly interprets the other. We are to 
" walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing ;" and Jesus 
Christ as formed in us, " the hope of glory," interprets that 
God to us, and stands for him. The command to grow in 
the knowledge of God requires only a very few words ; but 
the thing itself is the labor of ages ; and, as in all sciences 
and in every school of philosophy, growth has been hindered 
by wrong methods, so that science began and went out, 
almost, with Aristotle, because false methods were applied ; 
and it waited for the days of Bacon and the modern school 
before any great advance was made. History was but cluster- 
ing fables until the philosophic methods of history were 
developed. And, as the development of science in every 
department — for instance, physiology, the science of the 
mind, etc. — stumbled and blundered by wrong methods, 
coming continually short, and began to brighten and bear fruit 
so soon as right methods were found out and made use of ; 
so the knowledge of God has waited through the ages for 

Sttndat Morning, December 21, 1873. Lesson: Col. 1. Hymns (Plymouth 

Collection) : Nos. 210, 215, 607. 



306 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME * 

right methods. It has been pursued in various ways; and 
yet no other subject so important has received so little 
increment, compared with the time during which the world 
has existed and the human mind has been active, as this one 
matter — the knowledge of God. 

It is made the central and critical relation of Christ to 
every human soul. As we are to be saved by our faith in 
Jesus Christ, it becomes a matter of transcendent importance 
to each one of us to know Christ, to increase in our knowl- 
edge of him, and therefore to know how to increase in that 
knowledge. The fact is that very few persons now have any 
view or experience in regard to the Lord Jesus Christ as the 
interpreter of God's nature, which answers at all either to 
the experience of the apostles, or to that which they aimed at 
in their preaching. 

The question therefore comes up with emphasis: Is Jesus 
Christ so presented to men that they may reap the best fruits 
of faith ? Are the methods of presentation the wisest and 
the best ? Are the modes of study which are employed by 
the great mass of Christian people the best and the wisest ? 
It is to the consideration of this general subject that I shall 
devote this morning's discourse. 

To his personal disciples the relation of Christ was one of 
intense admiration and love. With all" the glow and enthusi- 
asm which belongs to heroic friendship, they loved Jesus 
during his life. Not only that, but after the bewilderment 
of his crucifixion was over, and after his resurrection became 
an article of assured faith to them, they continued to have 
an intense personal love for him. It was in each case the 
fidelity of a clansman to his chief. It was the enthusiasm 
of a man in regard to some high and noble friend. 

The expectation, doubtless, of soon seeing him again 
increased the intensity of this feeling — for all the early years 
of Christendom were passed in the expectation of the imme- 
diate coming of Christ. It was the whole aim of the apostles 
to inspire in every man just this personal love and enthusiasm 
tow 4 ard the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Does it exist? I do not ask whether men say "Lord, 
Lord," enough. I do not ask whether men say they are 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME t 307 

going to act thus and so " for Christ's sake ;" that they must 
"honor Christ ;" that they must "glorify Jesus." Of words 
there are enough. The question is far deeper than that. Is 
there an intense inward consciousness of the reality, the 
presence, the love, and the power of the Lord Jesus Christ 
which gives to many men such an impulse that they can say 
that tl\eir " life is hid with Christ in God " ? 

Is there any such affection as this ? Christ is the neighbor 
of a great many persons : does he abide in their households ? 
Does he come into their midst ? Does he dwell with them, 
and do they dwell with him ? An intense personal love for 
the Lord Jesus Christ being the germinant element, the begin- 
ning experience, so far as his relation with men was concerned, 
it was to this that the apostles directed all their exertion. 
Hence, the first argument was an argument to disabuse the 
Jewish mind of its prejudices, and to show the serious-minded 
and moral men among the Jews. that Jesus answered to the 
Old Testament description of the Messiah. Therefore, in 
the preaching and in the letters of the apostles, the views of 
Jesus Christ in relation to the prejudices and education of the 
Jews, in relation to the text of the Old Testament, in relation 
to the Jewish sacrifices, and in relation to foregone history, 
figure largely ; and much of modern theology has been sim- 
ilarly occupied in presenting views of Jesus Christ in relation 
to certain national Jewish prejudices or notions. 

Now, we have no such history as the Jews had ; we have 
no such prejudices as they had ; we have no such, system as 
they had; we have no sacrifices; we have no altars ; we have 
no priesthood ; and to present Christ to us in the same way 
that he was presented to the Jews would be utterly void, 
unless by education you raised up an artificial condition which 
should be equivalent to that of the Jewish system. To a 
certain extent, this has been done. A most extraordinary 
thing is the artificial view into which men have been educated 
in order to make modern theology match with the relative 
arguments of the apostles on the subject of Christ's relations 
to the old Jewish national system. 

If I wished to stimulate our people in New England to 
heroism, do you suppose I would talk to them of Marathon 



308 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME $ 

and Pultowa? I would talk to them of Bunker Hill and 
Lexington. If I were in Louisiana, and wished to inspire 
patriotism in the people there, I would not talk to them of 
Waterloo or of Wagram : I would talk to them of the battle 
of New Orleans and of the defeat of Pakenham. It is not 
wise to attempt to inspire men with a heroic sense of the 
Lord Jesus Christ by preaching to them of an altar that for 
two thousand years has not existed ; of a temple that was 
long ago in ruins ; or of a ritual that they never saw, and 
that is a mere historical reminiscence. There must be an 
inspiration that shall open Christ up to our sympathy and 
reason as he was opened up to the sympathy and reason 
of the Jews. The genius of the philosophy of the apostles 
was peculiarly to develop the character of Christ in such a 
way as to meet the special national want which existed in 
their time ; and the peculiar nature of our theology should 
be to meet that want which- is the outgrowth of our national 
education. 

As the Christian religion went forth and began to take 
hold of and subdue the mind of the world, it fell naturally 
first into the Greek line of thought ; and it was made a matter 
largely of mental philosophy. During the period of the ges- 
tation of theology, Christ's nature, his relation to the Godhead, 
and his equality or non-equality with God — all these elements 
were profoundly discussed. Christ Jesus, when the Greek 
philosophy prevailed, was presented to the human mind in his 
dynastic relations, as a part of the reigning Deity — as belong- 
ing to the imperial God. More and more this took place, so 
that men had a psychological problem put to them instead of 
a solving process. They had an analyzed, arranged, classified 
God; and he was to them what, to a lover of flowers, is a 
hortus siccus — an herbarium in which last summer's plants 
have been skillfully culled and dried and arranged with refer- 
ence to their genera and species and varieties. There they 
all are ; none of them are growing ; they are all dried ; but 
they are scientific. The work of the Greek mind on the 
character of God was to analyze it, to classify its relations and 
parts, and to present it to the world as a problem in mental 
philosophy applied to theology. 



WHAT m CHRIST TO ME % 309 

Then, coming down still further, theology became Roman- 
ized. The Romans introduced the legal element into it. 
Instead of having a simple personal Christ such as the Jews 
had ; or instead of having a psychological problem such as the 
Greeks had, they had a scheme of theology which treated of 
the moral government of God, of the Law-giver, of the 
Atoner, of the Spirit, and of the Church. At length the ad- 
ministration of religion and theology fell into priestly hands, 
and became a power more universal and more imperious than 
any that ever was developed on earth in any other direction. 
The imagination, the reason and the conscience were all put 
into the hands of the priest who exercised authority over the 
soul, and personal liberty died out. Men believed in God as 
the Church believed in him, and the Church believed in God 
as they were taught to believe by the imperial view. 

Thus, in the third estate, Christ, instead of being simply 
a person standing in personal relations to each man that 
sought him, had become the center of a great system of moral 
government ; and away down to the early days of this gen- 
eration we almost never heard of Christ as a person. Dur- 
ing all my early life I heard of sinfulness — though that I 
did not need to hear about ; for my own soul, and my own 
poor stumbling life taught me enough on that subject. I also 
heard of the Atonement of Christ. But almost never did I 
hear of Christ. He was something that I was to find after I 
had got through certain enigmas; after I had, as it were, been 
initiated, and had gone through certain stages, and become a 
sort of mason. Religion was regarded as a kind of masonry 
in which one passed in at a certain gate, giving a certain sig- 
nal, and took certain successive steps, and rose through certain 
gradations, and at last came to a point where Christ wao 
opened up to him. After the law had been shown to me, and 
I had gone through a process of repentance, and become re- 
generated, there was to be a Christ for me; but Christ was 
never presented to me when I was young as a great influencing 
power operating in advance of all other things. I had come 
to my majority before I had such a view of Christ. One of 
the most extraordinary epochs of my life was the hour (I 
never knew how nor exactly why) in which I discovered, or 



310 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME % 

in which it dawned upon me, that I had a personal Christ as 
something separable from problems of mental philosophy, 
from the church, from any plan of salvation, and from any 
doctrine of atonement — a Hying, loving God, whom I had a 
right to approach in my own personality, and who had toward 
me such feelings as made me welcome to come to him at any 
time. The opening of that conception to me was the begin- 
ning of the revolution of my life. I should not have been 
here to-day, nor through the last quarter of a century, but for 
that single view of Christ which rose upon me with healing 
in its beams. 

A personal Saviour, to be studied and learned, must be 
presented in such a way that we can make him personal 
to ourselves. This was done in part by that great re- 
vulsion called the Protestant Reformation. Salvation by 
faith was the glory of Luther. He unquestionably had in his 
own inward experience the right element; but it does not fol- 
low that the presentation of it was the one which was the best 
adapted to enlighten the whole world. Experience has shown 
that it was not. It was much covered with habits and preju- 
dices and philosophies; for no man can throw off in a moment 
the opinions of the ages of which he is a child and product. 
Everywhere, when a philosophy is renounced, it still lives. 
Its detritus remains. Men find a thousand prejudices and 
habits clinging to them after they have abandoned the beliefs 
which begot these incumbrances. When a philosophy has 
been set aside the fruit stays by, for good if it was good, and 
for bad if it was bad. 

In the main, by the Protestant system Christ was present- 
ed as a part of theology in a certain way; and although the 
element Christ Jesus, as a living God, was the glory and the 
secret power of that system, yet it was not brought out and 
freed from the accumulations and incrustations of the ages. 

"We come, now, to the truth that a personal Saviour must 
be studied from the stand-point of one's own soul. It is not 
the relation of the Lord Jesus Christ to God, it is not his re- 
lation to the divine government, it is not his relation to a 
system of theology, but it is his relation to you, as represent- 
ing very God, that you are to study. His personal rela- 



WHAT IiS CHRIST TO ME $ 311 

tion to your wants — to your understanding, to your imagina- 
tion, to your moral sense, to. your yearnings, to your strivings 
— this is the only point at which you can come to any knowl- 
edge of the Lord Jesus Christ that shall be available to you. 

This will bring us back to the apostolic experience. It 
will bring us back to the interior element of Christianity as 
distinguished from those external elements which have been 
thrown around about it. It will bring us from Jewish mis- 
conceptions, from the Grecized view, from the Roman view, 
and from the heterogeneous modem view, to the Lord Jesus 
himself, the Saviour of the world, by faith in whom each soul 
is to be redeemed. 

First, we are to understand that he is to our thought God, 
— by which I do not mean that any man can define God. No 
man can take a pencil and mark the features of Jehovah, and 
say, "Thus far is God, and no farther." How poor a God 
must that be whom I can understand ! He would be no larger 
than the measure of my thought — and that would be small 
indeed. No man can limit and define God. After all intel- 
lectual statements have been made, after all definitions have 
been given, immensely more is left untouched than has been 
touched. But the functions of the divine nature, the quality 
of that nature and its .moral essence, one may suspect or know 
without comprehending all of God. 

Bring me but a glass of water and I know what water is. 
I may not know, if I am untraveled, what are the springs in 
the mountain, what are cascades, what are the streams that 
thunder through deep gorges, what are broadening rivers, 
what are bays, or what is the ocean; and yet I may know 
what water is. A drop on my finger tells me its quality. From 
that I know that it is not wood, that it is not rock, that it is 
not air, that it is not anything but water. 

I am not able by searching to find out God unto perfection; 
and yet I know that, so far as I have found him out, and so far 
as he is ever going to be found out, whatever there is in nobil- 
ity, whatever there is in goodness, whatever there is in sweet- 
ness, whatever there is in patience; whatever can be revealed 
by the cradle, by the crib, by the couch* by the table; 
whatever there is in household love and in other loves; 



312 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME t 

whatever there is in heroism among men; whatever there 
is of good report; whatever has been achieved by imagination 
or by reason ; whatever separates man from the brute beast, 
and lifts him above the clod, — I know that all these elements 
belong to God, the eternal and universal Father. Although 
i may not be able to draw an encyclopediac circle and say, 
" All inside of that is God, and anything outside of it is not 
God;" yet I know that everything which tends upward, that 
everything which sets from a lower life to a higher, that every- 
thing which leads from the basilar to the coronal, that every- 
thing whose results are good, is an interpretation of God, who, 
though he may be found to be other than we suppose, will be 
found to be not less, but more glorious than we suspect. 

Every man, then, is to understand that Christ represents 
God, so far as the human mind is in a condition to understand 
and take him in. I find no difficulty in saying that Christ is 
God, because I never undertake to weigh God with scales or 
to measure him with compasses. There are men who have 
sat down and ciphered God out; they have figured up the 
matters of omnipotence, of omniscence and of omnipresence; 
they have marked the limits to which the Divine power can 
go; they can tell why God may do so and so, and why he may 
not do this, that or the other; and I can understand how they 
should raise objections to saying that Christ is God. To some 
extent we may comprehend the divine nature in certain points; 
but God is too large, not simply for the intelligence of indi- 
viduals, but for the intelligence of the race itself, though it 
has been developed for many ages. If it should be developed 
through countless ages to come, it would still be incapable of 
understanding God, so vast and voluminous is he; and yet I 
find no difficulty in saying, "Christ is God." So far as the 
human mind is competent to understand the constituent ele- 
ments of the divine nature they are in Jesus Christ, and he 
presents them to us. 

I draw out from my pocket a little miniature, and look 
upon it, and tears drop from my eyes. What is it ? A piece 
of ivory. What is on it ? A face that some artist has paint- 
ed there. It is a radiant face. My history is connected with 
it. When I look upon it tides of feeling swell in me. Some 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO MB % 313 

one comes to me and says, "What is that ?" I say, " It is 
my mother." "Your mother! I should call it a piece of 
ivory with water-colors on it. " To me it is my mother. When 
you come to scratch it and analyze it and scrutinize the ele- 
ments of it, to be sure it is only a sign or dumb show, but it 
brings to me that which is no sign nor dumb show. According 
to the law of my mind, through it I have brought back, in- 
terpreted, refreshed, revived, made potent in me, all the sense 
of what a loving mother was. 

So I take my conception of Christ as he is painted in dead 
letters on dead paper; and to me is interpreted the glory, the 
sweetness, the patience, the love, the joy-inspiring nature of 
God; and I do not hesitate to say, " Christ is my God," just 
as I would not hesitate to say of that picture, "'It is my 
mother." 

"But," says a man, "you do not mean that you really 
sucked at the breast of that picture ? " No, I did not; but I 
will not allow any one to drive me into any such minute anal- 
ysis as that. 

Now I hold that the Lord Jesus Christ, as represented in 
the New Testament, brings to my mind all the effluence of 
brightness and beauty which I am capable of understanding. 
I can take in no more. He is said to be the express image of 
God's glory. He transcends infinitely my reach; for when I 
have gone to the extent of my capacity there is much that I 
cannot attain to. 

When, therefore, Christ is presented to me I will not put 
him in the multiplication table, I will not make him a problem 
in arithmetic or in mathematics; I will not stand and say, 
"How can three be one ?" or "How can one be three?" I 
will interpret Christ by the imagination and the heart. Then 
he will bring to me a conception of God such as the heavens 
never, in all their glory, declared; such as the earth has never 
revealed, either in ancient or modern times. He reveals 
to us a God whose interest in man is inherent, and who 
through his mercy and goodness made sacrifices for it. 
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten 
Son to die for it. What is the only begotten Son of God ? 
Who knows ? Who cares to know ? That his only begotten 



314 WHAT 18 CHRIST TO ME t 

Son is precious to him we may know, judging from the expe- 
rience of an earthly father; and we cannot doubt that when 
he gave Christ to come into life, and humble himself to man's 
condition, and take upon himself an ignominious death, he 
sacrificed that which was exceedingly dear to him. And this 
act is a revelation of the feeling of God toward the human 
race. 

There had sat and thundered Jupiter, striking the im- 
agination of men; there had been the Grecian deities, good 
and bad, reaching through the great mythological realm 
of the fancy; there had been the grotesque idols of the 
heathen; these things had given to the world a thousand 
strange phantasies and vagrant notions; but nothing had 
given men a true conception of God until .Christ came, de- 
claring that God so loved the world that he gave the best 
thing he had to save it. 

Now, measure what the meaning of that truth is. Away, 
ye Furies ! Away, ye Fates ! Away, ignoble conceptions of 
Greece, of Rome, and of outlying barbarous nations ! Heaven 
is now made radiant by the Son of God, teaching us that at 
the center of power, of wisdom and of government, sits the 
all-paternal love, and that it is the initial of God. It is the 
Alpha and the Omega; and the literature and lore of divinity 
must be interpreted according to its genius. God so loved 
the world, before it loved him, knowing its condition, that 
he gave his only Son to die for it. This is the interpretation 
of the everlasting sacrifice of the divine nature in the way of 
loving. Jesus Christ epitomizes, represents, interprets God 
to us as the central fountain, source and supply of transcend- 
ent benevolence and love in the universe. This iu tense in- 
terest and love in God works to the development of every soul 
toward him. It is not divine indifference. It is not divine 
good-nature. It is not divine passivity. It is a parent's de- 
sire for a child's development from evil toward goodness, 
toward purity, toward sweetness, toward godliness. God is 
one who is laborious and self-sacrificing, seeking the race, not 
because they are so good, but to make them good, stimulat- 
ing them, inspiring them, and desiring above all things else 
that they shall be fashioned away from the animal toward his 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO MB t 315 

sonship. That is the drift and direction of the divine govern- 
ment. 

It is said that to preach God's love effeminates the mind. 
It is said that it makes men careless and -indifferent. It is 
said, "If God is a great central Love, why, then, it does not 
make much difference how men live." Ah ! the truth as it 
is set forth in the Bible is, that God loves in such a way as to 
urge men forward to that which is high and ennobling. 
Through love he chastens and pierces by way of stirring men 
up. By joy and by sorrow, by pleasure and by pain, by all 
means, God seeks to make the objects of his love worthy of 
himself. He that loves only to degrade is infernal. He that 
loves so that the object of his love withers under his influence 
loves as fire loves, consuming to ashes that which it loves. 
No one has true love who does not know that it is the inspi- 
ration of nobility; that it is a power which is carrying its ob- 
ject upward, being willing to suffer for the sake of lifting it 
higher and higher. That is the test of man's love, because 
God has given it to us as the test of his own love. 

Every man, then, is to seek Jesus Christ personally. The 
way of salvation is the way of heart-faith in Christ. He 
represents God, and God represents love, and love represents 
development from sinfulness toward righteousness. And 
every man is to seek this Christ as interpreting God to us for 
bis own sake. The perception of Christ's relations to one's 
own salvation is a thousand times more important than a 
perception of his relation to the Old Testament, or to the 
Godhead, or to theology, or to the history of the church. It 
is " Christ in you, the hope of glory" that the apostle was to 
preach. Your own want — the want of your character and of 
your whole nature — that is to be the starting-point in every 
investigation in this direction. "What is Christ to me ?" is 
to be the question. 

When for ten days the Java had sailed without an obser- 
vation, and when, at last, there came an opportunity to take 
one, did the captain take it for the sake of navigation at 
large ? No ; he took it to find out first of all where the good 
ship was on her voyage. Not that navigation was of no 
account ; not that astronomy was of no account ; but that 



316 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME f 

observation was taken for the sake of that particular ship 
on that particular voyage. 

I do not undertake to say that there is nothing else to be 
thought of in the .world but one's own spiritual condition ; 
but I do say that the prime consideration with every man is, 
" What is Christ to my soul ?" How does your soul need 
Christ ? How does he interpret himself as being the outlet 
of every want in your nature ? These are the all-important 
inquiries which concern you. 

No man can have another man's Christ — if you will not 
misunderstand my words and pervert my meaning. As a 
physician is who stands over you in sickness, so is Christ 
Jesus. "What to your thought a teacher is who labors with 
you according to your ignorance, that is the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

When, during the famine in Ireland, the benevolent 
people of this country sent provision to the thousands who 
were starving there, a government ship — a man-of-war — was 
appointed to take it over ; and never was there an armament 
that slew prejudices and animosities as did the cargo which 
was discharged out of the sides of that old frigate. But 
when the vessel arrives in Ireland, we will suppose one set of 
the inhabitants go down to the shore where she lies at anchor, 
and say, " This thing is to be looked at in the light of naval 
architecture." Another set go down, and say, "A govern- 
ment vessel ! What is the relation of goverment to the wants 
of a people who are suffering from hunger ? What business 
has a government to send provision in a war-ship ?" They 
are disposed to discuss the question in the light of civil 
polity. Another set go down and say, " Wheat and potatoes: 
what is the excellence of wheat compared with that of pota- 
toes, chemically considered ?" The suffering men stand on 
the shore and cry, " Our fathers and mothers and brothers 
and sisters are dying for the want of food : unload ! un- 
load! unload !" But those who are standing by interpose, 
and say, "You do not believe in chemistry; you do not be- 
lieve in civil government ; you do not believe in architect- 
ure !" I preach Christ as every man's Saviour ; as his 
strength ; as his bread ; as his water ; as his life ; as his joy ; 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME f 317 

as his hope. I say everything is trash as compared with 
that ; and men exclaim, " Loose theology ! He does not 
care for the church, nor for ordinances, nor for the Trinity, 
nor for the atonement, nor for a plan of salvation !" 

When men are starving it is not the time £o talk of ships, 
of navigation, or of what government may or may not do : it 
is the time to talk of wheat and meat. Corn and beef are 
better than politics under such circumstances. 

Now, when men are under heavy burdens that they do not 
know how to bear, is there a Burden-Bearer anywhere ? When 
men are unillumined, is there any Light in this world ? When 
men are in trouble, and cannot see their way out of it, and 
they say, in despair, ' ' The day of my birth be cursed, and 
the day of my death be blessed !" is there any Hope that shines 
forth and makes the darkness of the future bright as a morn- 
ing star in the horizon ? Is there anything in the Lord Jesus 
Christ that you need ? Is there anything for you, who are 
sorrowing for your companion that has been smitten down ; 
for you, whose affection has been disappointed ; for you, who 
are heartsick from hope deferred ; for you, whose affairs are 
all in a tangle ; for you, whose prosperity is like pasture-ground 
which the plow has turned upside down to prepare for new 
and unknown harvests ? Is there anything in him for me — 
for me, that am poor ; for me, that am desolate ; for me, that 
am stripped and peeled of all that makes life desirable ; for me, 
that am smitten and cast down ; for me, that am struggling 
to perform a task that I do not understand ; for me, who am 
aiming at that which I cannot reach ; for me, whose days are 
well-nigh spent; for me, a little child; for me, a boy at 
school ; for me, an apprentice ; for me, a pauper ; for me, 
that am to be hanged ? That is the soul's cry through life. 

What does it matter to me that the Jews had a system, 
that the Greeks had a system, or that the Eomans had a 
system ? Let their systems go to the dust. What do I care 
for such things when I am rolling in pain that I cannot 
endure ? Then, if there is anything in the universe which 
will relieve my suffering, I want it. 

Have you ever had a fever? Have you ever tossed all 
night with hateful dreams, and waked in the morning parched 



318 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME t 

and well-nigh perishing with thirst ? Have you ever felt as 
though you would give the world for a drop of water ? Go 
to a person who is in that condition, and read to him the 
Midsummer Night's Dream, or Romeo and Juliet, What 
does he care for them ? "Oh, for a drop of water !" is his 
cry. Eead to him Bacon's Maxims, What does he care 
for Bacon's Maxims ? He cries, " Water !" Eead to him the 
most exquisite literature the world has known. He will not 
listen. <c Give me water ! Give me water !" he says. The 
whole sum of his being is concentrated in that one want, and 
it dominates. The way to give him other things is to supply 
first that overmastering want. 

When men are in their sins, and they wander, wayward, in 
the dark, longing for something — they know not what, Christ 
says, "I am the Way ; I am the Light." Art thou the way 
out of this tangle ? Art thou my unclouded light which no 
storm can dissipate or blow out ? When men are hungering, 
art thou, Jesus, the soul's food ? Is there something in God 
as interpreted by Christ that shall meet every want in the 
human sou] ? Yes, there is just that. 

Are you a little child ? The glory of the incarnation is 
that Christ was a little child. There is no little child in 
whose path Jesus has not walked, or one that was exactly 
like it. He knows every child's experience — his hopes and 
fears; his expectations and disappointments; his pleasures 
and pains ; his joys and sorrows. It may not help him that 
he knows your troubles ; but it helps you to know that he 
knows them. 

Christ was in his early life subject to his parents. Even 
after he was filled with the divine afflatus, so that he disputed 
with the doctors in the temple, he went back home, and sub- 
mitted himself to the control of his father and mother. 
With conscious power and glory, he put himself under the 
direction of those who were inferior to him, willingly and 
cheerfully. 

If you are toiling in an unrequited way in life, think how 
Christ labored. Old Galilee was mixed up with all manner 
of detritus. People from every nation under the Eoman ban- 
ner had flocked thither. A vast cosmopolitan population was 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME % 319 

gathered there. And there Christ was brought up as a Jew. 
He learned the trade which his father followed. He worked 
at the bench. When a young man, by laboring with his hands 
he scraped up a small competence with which to buy his 
daily bread. Every man that toils, then, has in Christ one 
that has been like him. 

Are you turmoiled and driven hither and thither, not 
knowing where to lay your head ? The Son of man had not 
where to lay his head. The birds had nests ; the foxes had 
holes ; the very sea was allowed to rest at times ; but Jesus 
almost never rested. By day and by night, and everywhere, 
he was a man of sorrow and of toil. 

Are you abiding at home ? Are you happy and contented ? 
There are no sweeter pictures in the Bible than those which 
portray the joys of Christ at the festivities which he attended, 
and in the thousand ways in which he made others happy. 
In creating so much happiness he could not but have been 
happy himself. 

Christ stands for men in all their relations. He stands 
for them in their crimes. I do not know why it should be so, 
but it seems to me there is nothing else — not even the scene 
of the cross itself — that touches me so much as the incident 
which took place when he came back to Capernaum and was 
surrounded by rich men, and was invited to go to a feast in a 
nobleman's house. As he entered, a crowd, among whom 
were publicans and harlots, pressed in after him, and actually 
sat down at the table with him, unbidden, and ate with him. 
Those who were looking on stood, and pointed, and said, 
"See, he eateth with publicans and sinners!" Eating with 
another is a sign of hospitality and friendship and fidelity. 
Christ's conduct toward these poor creatures awoke a ray of 
hope in their most desperate depravity. It is this light which 
dawns in the midnight of the human soul that touches me* 
That which affects me is the voice that goes far down to the 
depths below where hope usually goes, and says to the child 
of sin and sorrow, "There is salvation for you." God does 
not cast away even the most depraved. The man who lies 
right by the lion's head ; the man who is half brother to the 
wolf ; the man who slimes his way with the worm — even he 



320 WHAT m CHRIST TO ME % 

has One who thinks kindly of him, and says to him, " Thee, 
too, have I called ; for thee I have a refuge and a remedy. " 

There was but one single class that Christ had no mercy 
for, and that was the class who had no mercy for themselves. 
I mean those men whose intellects were cultivated, whose im- 
aginations were cultivated, whose moral sense was cultivated, 
but who turned all their talents into selfishness. They were 
dissipated by the top of the brain. Christ did not disregard 
dissipation of the passions; he regarded it as evil in the ex- 
treme ; but he regarded the dissipation of the top of the brain 
as worse still. He said to those proud proprietaries, those 
men who had outward and not inward morals, those men who 
knew so much, and used their knowledge to oppress others 
with ; who were so scrupulous about themselves, but did not 
care for anybody else — he said to them, pointing at those mis- 
erable harlots and those extortionate publicans, " You never 
do such things as they are guilty of doing, oh no ; and yet 
they have a better chance of going to heaven than you have." 

Even in the case of Zaccheus, when he said, " Lord, I am 
trying to do right," Christ said, " Come down ; I will go to 
thy house." There was not a creature on earth who felt the 
need of a Saviour to whom Christ did not at once open the 
door of his heart ; and the beauty of it was that Christ's heart 
stood open for all that were behind him, or before him, or on 
either side of him. When Christ came from the eternal 
sphere he brought with him as much of God as he could put 
into the conditions which he was to assume ; as much as the 
human mind could comprehend ; and though he laid aside 
that part of his being by reason of the circumstances in which 
he was to be placed, yet having entered upon our estate, 
when he spake, God spake ; and when he showed mercy, it 
was an exhibition of God's mercy. 

Now, have any of you, interested in the study of the texts 
of Scripture, considered the subject of your own want; of 
your own hope ; of your own fear ; of your own strivings ; of 
your own unworthiness ; of your own longings of soul ; and 
have you said, "Lord, being what I am, what canst thou do 
for me ?" Have you said, " What canst thou do for one who 
is slow and lethargic ? What canst thou do for one who is 



WHAT m CHRIST TO MB f 321 

always behind his conception ?" There is a Christ for just 
such an one as that. Have you said, "Lord, what canst 
thou do for a fiery nature?" There is a divine power for those 
that are fiery. Have you said, " Lord, what canst thou do 
for me that am proud and hard ?" There is a God of love and 
mercy for such as you are. Have you ever said, " What canst 
thou do for dispositions that are cold and selfish ?" There is 
a medicine for just such dispositions. Have you said, " Lord, 1 
what canst thou do for those who are self-seeking ?" There 
is provision for them, too. 

Oh come, ye that are weary and heavy laden ; oh come, 
all ye that are sinful ; oh come, all ye who feel the burden of 
your sin : to you, to-day, I preach a risen Christ. I preach 
to-day no plan and no atonement, although there is a plan 
and there is an atonement. But that which you want is a liv- 
ing Saviour. What you want is a person that your mind can 
think about as you think about your father and mother, your 
brother and sister, your friend, your physician, your deliv- 
erer, your leader, your guide. 

Such is Christ. Such is he — ready to be over against every 
want. Being the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
end, the Alphabet, he is the sum of the whole literature. He 
is the highest of all. He is broader than the earth. He is 
universal in sympathy. He says to every man, "I am the 
Sun of righteousness." 

What art thou, Sun ? Thou that bringest back from 
captivity the winter day ; thou that teachest all the dead 
things in the earth to find themselves again ; thou that dost 
drive the night away from the weary eyes of watchers ; thou 
that art the universal bounty-giver ; thou that dost travel end- 
lessly carrying benefactions immeasurable, illimitable, beyond 
want and conception of want — thou art the figure that repre- 
sents God ; and God is as much greater in bounty and mercy 
and power than thou art as spirit is greater than matter. For 
the sun is a spark. Around about the brow of him that 
reigns are suns sparkling as jewels in a crown. What, then, 
is that God who is accustomed to speak of himself to us as 
the Sun of righteousness that arises with healing in his 
beams? 



322 WHAT IS CHRIST TO MB t 

If there are those who have been accustomed to judge of 
their hope by their life alone ; by whether they are living right 
or wrong ; by whether they are living in a constant state of 
self-condemnation, and under a perpetual state of bondage to 
their conscience or not, then they only know one thing—that 
they are striving, with a greater or less degree of earnestness. 
And they mourn, saying, " I am so insincere ! I am so cold ! 
I so often promise and do not fulfill ! " Why, that it is to 
be man. 

The doctor has come. He has taken charge of the patient 
that has been near to the border of death. The crisis is past ; 
and he says to the child, "You are going to get well. I have 
got the upper hand of the disease." The next day, in the 
afternoon, the physician comes again ; and the poor child 
lifts up its hands and says, "Doctor, I know that I am not 
going to get well. Not long after you went away, yesterday, 
a pain shot through me here ; and I am sure I am not going 
to get well. I cannot sleep ; I am very, very tired ; and I can 
see no hope." "Well," says the doctor, "if you did not 
have pain you would not be sick. To be sick is to have poor 
digestion ; it is to have that kingdom of the devil, the liver, 
the scene of all manner of impish tricks ; it is to have various 
signs of weakness and disease : but I have begun to get the 
ascendency, and you are going to recover. To-day you may 
walk across the room." The child walks feebly, and is 
faint, and goes back to the couch, and says, " It is just as I 
thought — I am not going to get well." The very weakness 
clouds the sight of a beginning of strength, and makes hope 
hang heavily. The despondency is a portion of the disease. 

So it is with people in spiritual things ; and oh, if the 
continuity of your fight against evil, and your salvation, 
depended on your strength and fidelity, you might feel dis- 
couraged ; but who is He that has called you ? Who is He 
that has said, " I carry your lineaments on the palm of my 
hand, as one carries the portrait of a friend in his hand, and 
you are ever in my memory. A mother may forget her suck- 
ing child, but I will not forget thee." The eternal God, who 
bears up the orbs of the universe, with whom is no weariness, 
no variableness, no shadow of turning, has bowed down his 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME f 323 

love, and has shown himself to be God, in that he has had 
compassion on you ; and your hope lies in him. It is because 
of the fidelity and grandeur of his continuing love, and not 
because you are virtuous and strong and skillful and wise, 
that you are to hope. 

Sleep, child, though the storm rages. But suppose the 
little passenger, tossed about by the waves on the good staunch 
ship, should go on deck to see if it could not do something ? 
What can a child do with the Atlantic Ocean ? What can a 
child do with a scowling, howliug northern storm ? What 
can a child do with a ship that he does not understand ? But 
there is the old sturdy captain, who is gruff to the passengers, 
and gruffer yet to nature. He weathers the storm, and 
brings the ship safe into harbor. Then, when all the smiles 
and glory of the continent seem to light up the great bay, 
how grateful everybody is ! How willing the passengers all 
are to sign a letter congratulating the good captain ! 

God is the Captain who directs this great world-ship; and 
though he will not always speak when you want him to, yet 
he carries you, night and day, safely on the stormy sea; and 
ere long he will bring you safely into port; and when he has 
brought you in, and you see him as he is, no word can de- 
scribe, no experience can interpret, nothing that has entered 
into the heart of man can conceive, the rapture and joy which 
we shall feel. When we are lifted up out of this lower realm, 
and we stand in the celestial sphere and behold our Deliverer, 
we shall be satisfied. 0, word of wonder, to one wandering 
through the earth among men, and finding no home — satis- 
fied! We do not yet know what that means; but you and I 
and all of us are rushing fast toward the day when we 
shall stand, without spot or blemish, and shall see Him as he 
is, and shall be like him. We shall be satisfied; and that will 
be heaven ! 



324 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME t 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We rejoice, O Lord, that we are permitted to draw near to thee, 
taught not alone by thy Word, nor by the experience of those in 
every age who have found thee, but by that which thou hast given 
to us of thyself, and by which we turn ourselves in strength and in 
wisdom and in attainment toward children, toward the ignorant and 
toward the imperfect. We recognize it as a gift from God. It is not 
from beneath : it is of thee ; and by it we interpret thee. Thou art 
greater in Fatherhood than any of us know how to be. If we, being 
evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more 
shall our Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask 
him ! We come toward thee as toward an All-helping goodness. By 
whatever name thou mayest be known, thou art a God of love and of 
mercy, seeking by all means to lift up those who are low ; to inspire 
those who are dark; to give comfort and grace to those who are 
needy ; to sustain those who are ready to perish. All the universe 
beneath thy brooding hand is rising up and moving upward. All men 
are carried along upon the divine currents, even when they under- 
stand them not. Thou art compassing the great ends of thy govern- 
ment through the changes which are going on in all the earth ; and 
we rejoice that toward the future there is brightness that grows 
brighter and brighter. We rejoice that the chaos, that the formless 
void, is left behind, and that the earth, created by thee, and bearing 
the race, moves forward. Thou art its Leader; and though thou dost 
direct it through darkling ways, though thou dost cause it to move 
through ways that are strange and mysterious, yet we believe in thee. 
We believe that thou art a safe Guide of every soul that puts its trust 
in thee, and that thou wilt save the nations. Thou leadest us from 
the clod, away from the beasts, above all that is low in man, towards 
purity and power in righteousness, until, being sons of God, disguised, 
one by one we lay aside the disguise at last, and stand the sons 
of light, crowDed in thy presence, and received with ineffable joy 
in the midst of the heavenly host, henceforth to be priests and kings 
of God. 

Grant unto us enough of this faith, O our Father, to keep us in 
mind thereof, that we may not think ourselves to be dull beasts of 
burden ; that we may not think ourselves to be particles blown about 
by every wind that chance sends racketing through the world ; that 
we may not feel discouraged, and give over the conflict as if every- 
thing was adverse to us, and nothing was for us. Grant that our 
thoughts may lift themselves up in spite of sorrow and darkness and 
trouble to the ever-living victory that awaits those who will inherit 
it. Grant that there may come forth this morning from thy throne 
to every waiting heart here a sense of God present and inspiring 
it. May Jesus Christ be born again. Even though it be as a babe, O 
come to every heart, and grow therein, and fill it with thine own self, 
and give to human faculty divine power. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt purge away all dross. Drive 
out all darkness. Take away all weakness, and put in its place divine 
strength. Give us the interpretation, so far as we need it, of thy 



WHAT IS CHRIST TO MB t 325 

daily providence. If we cannot interpret nor see, tben give us faith 
by which we may trust thee. As we trust tried friends, and know 
them, and lean upon them, and are sure that they will never break 
down under any load that we put upon them, so may our souls trust 
thee. Living, dying, for time, for eternity, everywhere, in all that is 
dear to us, in our affections, in our friendships, in our labors, in our 
ambitions, in whatever of experience is laid upon us, day by day, may 
we have the underlying strength of God, and may we lean upon it 
and rest in it. May we know something of thy bosom as well as of 
thine outstretched hand. We behold thee working wondrously upon 
the earth. Thou art the Potter indeed, fashioning worlds into vessels 
as it pleaseth thee. O grant that we may know something, not of thy 
shape, but of thy nature. Grant that we may know something of 
thee, not as an Architect of material things, but as One who has 
power over the soul. O, ,let thine inmost soul speak to us and say, 
Henceforth I call thee not slaves, but friends ; and let us know what 
the Lord doeth in our secret thought and feeling. We pray that thou 
wilt give to every one in thy presence the strength which he needs 
to-day. If we have joy, grant that it may be a joy purified ; and that 
it may become perennial. If we have doubt, grant the solution of that 
doubt. If it be vague and undefined trouble that is upon us, grant us 
release. O thou that dost breathe upon the cloud and lift the mist 
and reveal the shore to the perplexed mariner, give at last to those 
who seek the truth and know it not, a revelation of that truth. 
Comfort the weak. Speak forgiveness of sins to the guilty conscience. 

We pray that thou wilt help every one to do the thing that is 
right where trials are, and where it is hard to carry the yoke and the 
cross. Fulfill yet again to-day the promise ten thousand times ful- 
filled before. Make thy burden light, and thy yoke easy, and thy 
cross life-giving. 

Bless not us alone, but all who are dear to us. We pray for our 
children ; for our companions ; for all who have labored with us in 
word or in doctrine, or in the works of life, wherever they may be. 

We pray that thou wilt grant that the Spirit of love and purity 
and divine wisdom may rest in power upon all who are in authority. 
Bless the President of these United States, and all that are joined 
with him. We pray for the Congress assembled. Bless all the legis- 
latures. Bless governors, and judges, and magistrates of every grade. 
Bless the whole citizenship of this great republic. We pray that thou 
wilt lead us in right ways. May our strength stand in our righteous- 
ness. May all the nations of the earth, looking upon us, behold the 
better way, the way of knowledge— and may superstition flee away 
before it ; show us the way of virtue — and may all intemperate wicked- 
ness be destroyed ; keep us in the way of godliness and of truth and 
of piety. So may thy promises be fulfilled. So at last may the earth 
begin to round into perfect light. May the darkness pass away, and 
the morning come whose sim shall never go down. So, at last, do 
thou, that wert born on earth in feebleness, stand again to reign a 
thousand years in everlasting strength and glory. 

And to thy name, Father, Son and Spirit, shall be the praise 
evermore Amen. 



326 WHAT IS CHRIST TO ME t 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

OtTO Father, we pray that thy word may be a comfort to souls 
. that are cast down, and an inspiration to those that are not stirred. 
We pray that Jesus may rise upon our thought— though not upon our 
thought except by our thought to be conveyed to our want. Draw 
near to every one of us. See what we need inwardly. If thou art 
our Lover, O Lord Jesus Christ ; if thou art a Lover whose love has 
been measured by death for us, and for each one of us by name ; if 
such is the measure by which to interpret thy love, then we call upou 
Love to help us. We have a right to thee, O Love. We have a right 
to thy power; we have a right to thy patience ; we need thee sorely. 
We call on thee, O thou blessed, loving Jesus, because we are blind ; 
because we are hungry; because we are poor and sinful and un- 
deserving. We call on thee for thy bounty, that we may be clothed, 
that we may be fed, that we may be wholesome and beautiful. So 
may we stand clothed in the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and be received in our Father's house, when the conflict and struggle, 
the wonder and mystery of life are over, to go no more out forever, 
and be as the angels of God. And to the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Ghost, we give the praise of our salvation, forever and forever. 
Amen, 



THE SCIENCE OF EIGHT LIYING. 



THE SCIENCE OF EIGHT LIYING. 



"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil 
speaking, be put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind one 
to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even aa God tor 
Christ's sake hath forgiven you."— Eph. iv., 31, 32. 



This fourth chapter of Ephesians, if some incidental ma- 
terial that is in it were eliminated, might be considered as a 
medal struck, representing the ends of Christianity, perhaps 
better than any other in the whole New Testament— the posi- 
tive and the negative. In the 13th and 16th verses we have 
the positive : 

"Till we all come in the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of 
the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ: " 

"Speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, 
which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body, fitly 
joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, 
according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, 
maketh increase of the body unto the edifying [building up] of itself 
in love." 

There is the positive side— the generic and ideal aim of 

the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. Then comes the negative 

side : 

" That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, 
which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in 
the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on the new man, which after 
God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Wherefore putting 
away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor; for we are 
members one of another. Be ye angry and sin not." 

There is no half-way obedience to that last command. 

Sunday Morning, December 28, 1873. Lesson : Eph. tv. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Nob. 180, 381, U. 



330 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

There are a great many who start on it, and get as far as be- 
ing angry, and go no further. The command is, " Be ye an- 
gry and sin not" How to be angry in such a way as not to sin 
is a great, a divine art. 

" Let not the sun go down upon your wrath ; neither give place to 
the devil." " Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your 
mouth." " Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and ctamou, and 
evil speaking, he put away from you, [that whole round and raft of 
mischievous moods and states of mind which inflict so much suffering 
on life,] with all malice, [with every attitude, with every inflection of 
experience which implies trouble to others, by your thoughts, by 
your feelings, by your conduct, or by your want of conduct— every- 
thing that indicates hurt, harm to your fellow-men,] and be ye kind 
one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God 
for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." 

Christianity I define to be the science of right-living. It 
is the new manshift of the world. The forces which it em- 
ploys are various; but the end which it seeks is definite — 
namely, perfect manhood in Christ Jesus. This is the object. 
Everything else is instrumental and relative. It can never 
be understood, then, in the letter, nor in the philosophy. To 
understand Christianity you must see it in the living form. 
Never can you see it, nor can you ever understand it, specu- 
latively. No man can understand a garden by a book. If he 
has seen a garden the book will help hiui. If he has not seen 
a garden the book will be something ; but the book is a guide 
to the garden, while the garden is the thing itself. The 
whole frame-work, and all the filling up, of the gospels and 
the letters of the New Testament, are secondary instru- 
mental elements, the end being the new man in Christ Jesus. 
The power of Christianity does not lie in its history, nor in 
its statements of fact, nor in its systems of worship ; it lies in 
that which the statements of truth and the systems of wor- 
ship and discipline produce in mankind. For it is not the 
letter, but the living epistle, as the apostle suggests, that is 
the wisdom and the power of God; it is Christ in men; it is 
God revealed in the human disposition; it is a kind of second- 
ary, diffusible incarnation of God in the race. 

Consider the influence on human life of the strong malign 
element which man inherits. Consider what would be the 
effect on the whole arrangement of society, and the whole in- 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 331 

tcrcourse of men, if the conditions of the 31st verse of this 
chapter could be instantly carried out. Consider what would 
be the effect if men should at once put away cc all bitterness." 
Bitterness is that which means mischief. It is not indigna- 
tion, which may be lordly and very kind: it means that which 
the snake means when he strikes with his fang. There is 
death in it. Bitterness, whether it is calm, whether it is si- 
lent, or whether it is obstreperous and vocal, should be laid 
aside. Consider what would be the effect if men should put 
away all " wrath" — hot and malign; all " anger" — quick and 
virulent; all " clamor" — disputes, high words, quarrelings; 
all " evil speaking" — whisperings, back-bitings, tale-bearings, 
running to and fro to blow up mists which shall chill or injure 
people; "with all malice." The apostle enumerates a few things, 
and then sums up the whole matter by including all things that 
belong to the hurting power of the mind; and he says, " Let 
them all be put away from you." Suppose society should in- 
stantly discharge itself of all these acrid elements which ex- 
ist everywhere ? The change would be so great that the at- 
mosphere of life would seem different. 

You know how, in the early spring of the year, there come 
from the north and the west those ice-bearing winds that al- 
most, in spite of your raiment, cut you to the very marrow; how, 
if you are enfeebled, and have no resisting power, you shiver 
and shrink at home, or in the street find it hard to stand up 
and move about in your avocations; how, nevertheless, an un- 
seen hand swings around the wind so that ere you are aware of 
it, before your attention is called to it, you are conscious that 
you are breathing another atmosphere; and how, at last, when 
you look at the weather-vane you find, sure enough, that the 
wind has turned to the south, making the air warm and humid 
like that of summer. 

Now, a change as great as that would come over human 
society if all the pain-bearing elements in persons, if the 
power which persons have of making others unhappy, should 
be purged away, laid aside, destroyed, by the incoming of the 
divine Spirit. That ought to be; that was meant to be; that 
is to be. 

A great many people have a feeling as though to be just, 



332 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

to be stern, to be hard, to be cold, at times, was very manly 
and very noble. No, never ! The human soul derives its 
pain-giving power from its animal connections. That power 
comes from the beast that is in men. It is part and parcel 
of that "old man" which is to be destroyed, laid aside, and 
purged away. The "new man" in Christ Jesus is to have 
power, but it is to be a power that inheres in kindness and 
love — in that new temperature which comes from heaven, and 
envelops the whole man. If in the family there were no 
more naggings, no more twittings, no more pinchings, no 
more snappings, no more snarls, no more scowls, no more 
morosenesses, no more selfishnesses, no more jealousies, no 
more evil speakings, it would be a different place. When the 
fire is first kindled, and the smoke cannot find its way through 
the pipe into the flues, and it flows into the room, filling it 
full, you throw every door and window open, and in a little 
while all the smoke is swept out of the room, and the fire be- 
gins to burn, warming the chimney, and the draft is good, and 
the smoke passes through its proper channel. The difference 
between a room full of smoke and a room without a particle of 
smoke in it is the difference that there would be in a house- 
hold if the inmates knew how to put the old man out and how 
to put the new man in, and keep him there all day long, and 
during their whole life. Bitterness on the part of one member 
will turmoil and lower the tone and destroy the happiness of a 
whole household. One ugly nature is enough to distemper an 
entire family; and, on the other hand, one light-shedding, 
joy-bearing nature is enough to restore the equilibrium of a 
disturbed family. Great is the power of a human soul. 

In the intercourse of men there is an affected kindness, 
or a kindness put on. It is called " politeness." It ought 
to be genuine ; but even in its present form it is beneficial. 
It makes society possible. It obliges men to inject poisons 
disguisedly or not at all. Etiquette, courtesy, requires that 
men should treat each other gracefully, pleasingly. It tends 
to make the intercourse of society harmonious. And that 
which externally politeness strives after belongs interiorly to 
the Christian new man. It is his nature. Society itself 
would be immensely relieved, and far more fruitful of good, 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 338 

if this spirit could be made prevalent. If out of business all 
envyings, jealousies, strifes, hardnesses, wrath, and clamor 
could be taken away, how smoothly it would flow on ! What 
a manufactory is whose hundred looms and* whose thousand 
spindles have not been oiled for months, so that they shriek 
and squeak on their rusty pivots turning, that is business ; 
and what such a manufactory would be if every joint of every 
loom and every spindle were oiled so that the noise should 
cease and nothing should be heard but the regular sounds of 
industry, that business would be if all the bitterness which 
belongs to the lower and animal nature were taken out of it. 
That " old man" that everybody has something of, and that 
everybody starts full-freighted with, is a very bad business 
man. He makes business slow, painful, and wearisome ; but 
the new man whose nature it is to cast out that which 
produces pain and bring in that which produces happiness, 
joy, benevolence — oh, that we could get him into the part- 
nership ! 

In the strifes and collisions of public affairs, in the 
conduct of the State, in the settlement of questions of 
debate, in the management of the great interests of the com- 
monwealth, how is the malign element all the time at war 
with the real good of men ! 

If you want to know why it is that men so prematurely 
grow old ; if you want to know why it is that there is a mystic 
handwriting on their faces, it needs no Ohampollion to explain 
this : it is because in the family, in the social circle, in 
business, in public affairs, everywhere, there is an element in 
the human constitution which asserts itself, and is continu- 
ally rasping, wearing, wasting men by destroying their peace 
of mind and making them unhappy in various ways. That 
is the reason why the world goes on at such a groaning rate. 
But if a change could be effected so that men should carry 
only their sweet natures into their household affairs, into 
their business, and into the administration of public matters, 
how different it would be ! If the dominant temper of all 
rulers, of all magistrates, of all legislators, of all function- 
aries in public affairs, was kindness, what a different influence 
they would exert upon society ! If what men wanted and 



334 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

strove for and had was good-will ; if it exhaled from them ; 
if it was their real nature ; if in the conduct of business it 
was their first, their second, their third, their continuous 
impulse; if under pressure, under trial, under temptation, 
that side of their mind was ever presented ; if even when 
bruised it were fragrant; if in social relationship the one 
constant breathing of the soul was from the side that pro- 
duced kindness and good will, incessantly, always — if such 
were the state of things, the new heavens and the new earth 
would have come. 

The trouble with this world is that men use their bottom 
nature almost exclusively, and only attach to it their top 
nature here and there. The faculties of human nature which 
are usually employed are basilar and malign. The world 
groans and travails in pain because it is under the dominion 
of the animal nature that is in the old man, and not under 
that of the nature of kindness which is in the new man. 

Consider the intrinsic beauty and moral power of a nature 
in which the malign element is subdued, and the whole emis- 
sive force of the soul is genial, benevolent, and helpful. 
Looking upon an individual as you would upon a picture, a 
statue, or a fine piece of architecture, is there anything that 
men so much admire as a strong, grand nature that acts 
invariably in the line of kindness ? 

We know very little about William Shakespeare as a man ; 
but if it should be discovered, by some old letters, by some 
history (which will never be dug up) that he was an envious, 
jealous, spiteful man, it would throw a cloud over the brilli- 
ance of his life-work. It would be subject-matter of sadness 
to every one who loves humanity. But if you could discover 
letters which showed that aside from his extraordinary power 
(which, perhaps, in his line, was greater than that which has 
been vouchsafed to any other human being before or since), 
he was as full of gentleness and sweetness and kindness as the 
most notable and beautiful natures which he created in his 
matchless dramas, and that he wrote that which was bad in 
his works, not out of his own self, but out of his observation 
of the world, would not everybody feel that, great as his 
dramas are, he was greater than any of them? Do not men 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 335 

long to find heroes ; and finding them, is it not the tendency 
of better culture, as it rises, to seek better natures, and 'to 
crown the illustrious ones of earth with goodness rather than 
with evil ? 

So long as the world stands we shall admire the intellect- 
ual force of Napoleon, but as the world grows older it will 
less aud less call him a full hero, because in his disposition 
and nature he was malign, without moral principle, and with- 
out any spiritual instinct. He was a hero on the lower plane 
of life. 

More and more as we grow, we appreciate the finer traits 
that are in human nature. Men going out into life never 
forget the mother who stays at home, and who has presented 
to them a nature with reason dominant, with a high moral 
sense, with refined and sweet affections, with taste, with 
patience, with gentleness, with self-sacrifice, and with disin- 
terestedness. A man may go through all the world ; he may 
become a pirate, if you please ; he may run through every 
stage of belief and unbelief ; he may become absolutely apos- 
tate ; he may rub out his conscience ; he may destroy his 
fineness in every respect ; but there will be one picture that 
he cannot efface. Living or dying there will rise before him, 
like a morning star, the beauty of that remembered goodness 
which he called Mother. 

There are men who are so cynical that they swear the 
whole race to hell ; but they always spare some one person — 
wife, or sister, or mother. There is a single character that 
survives universal annihilation in their thoughts. There is 
nothing that takes hold of a man's very being so much as 
a nature that seems to be well nigh perfect. 

That is the reason why fiction is so influential upon us. 
"Writers of fiction can fill their books with just such creatures 
as they please ; and the consequence is that they are popu- 
lous with angels. We yearn for that which is angelic ; and 
when we come into its presence we find it too good to be 
thrown away. When we meet persons who seem to be en- 
dowed with goodness we wait ; and if after waiting we find 
that they are what they seem to be, whether the goodness is 
native to them, or whether it is implanted in them by divine 



336 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

grace ; if we find that their bent is happiness-producing ; if 
we find that they are just the same under trials and tempta- 
tions as under other experiences, we cannot, no matter who 
we are or what we are, help admiring their character, and 
feeling the power of it. It is more than a sermon ; it is more 
than a rebuke ; it is more than a judgment-day ; it is more 
than anything in the world that comes in the shape of expos- 
itory truth. The light of a real Christian life shining on men 
puts them to more shame than the cunning sentences of the 
most pungent discourses. Nothing is so sweet and encourag- 
ing to the soul as to see a nature blossoming under the influ- 
ence of the divine Spirit. I do not mean folks who sing a 
good deal, and pray a good deal, and talk a good deal, and 
attend meetings a good deal, and are on committees a good 
deal ; these things are excellent, and they may be among the 
fruits of piety, but they are not piety. I mean people whose 
nature is sweet and fragrant, and who pour that nature out 
on other people, and make it felt everywhere. I mean persons 
who fulfill perfectly this command: 

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil 
speaking be put away from you, with all malice; and he ye kind one 
to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for 
Christ's sake hath forgiven you." 

Find such a nature as that, and tell me if there is another 
power in the world that produces such an effect on you as it 
does. 

Now, that is the gospel. You say the gospel is a history 
of Christ, I say it is not. The gospel is the spirit of Christ 
in a living form before you. It is Christ manifested to you — 
so much of Christ as human life can interpret ; so much of 
Christ as constitutes the power of God and the wisdom of God 
unto salvation to those who believe. It is not the letter, which 
is a mere instrument. The gospel is the living form of those 
qualities which were embalmed in Christ, which are recorded 
of him, "and which have been exhibited by his disciples in 
every age. Therefore the church is called his body. The re- 
production of his dispositions in man constitutes the gospel. 
The divine elements, as set forth by Christ, and as developed 
in men, are the real gospel. There is not a bit more gospel 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 337 

in this world than there is in the Irving hearts of Christian 
people. All else that goes by the name of the gospel is dead. 
There are unrisen Christs, any number of them ; there are 
any number of Christs in printer's ink; but of Christs in 
mem the hope of glory, how many are there? If I were to 
call the roll to-day for men who have to any considerable 
extent by their example made people think of Christ, how 
many of you would dare to respond? 

I kuow when a man has come into my house wearing fra- 
grant flowers. I enter the room, and say, " There has been 
mignonette or grape blossoms here, one or the other, I cannot 
tell which." I know it by the fragrance that they have left 
behind them. A man comes in, and I say, "Who has tube- 
roses here ? Somebody has. " The fragrance that these flowers 
have is such that it cannot be disguised. If a man has the 
odor of balm or myrrh about him, the perfume of it is distin- 
guishable. Take me into a pine forest, and you cannot 
persuade me that I am in an oak forest. I know the odor of 
the pine. If you were to take me into a new-mown field, it 
would be useless for you to tell me that I was in an old barn. 
You could not deceive me in that way. 

Take into the presence of those who are capable of spirit- 
ual discernment a true Christian man, and the impression he 
makes is unmistakable. Some men come where you are, and 
when they go away you are screwed up, and you do not know 
what the matter is. Your nerves are ail tense, and you can- 
not understand why. It is the old man in them that affects 
you so. Other people come into your presence, and when 
they go away you are relaxed, and feel weak and nerveless. 
Other people come in, and somehow when they go away 
everything looks blue to you. There is a mist over every- 
thing. You cannot see clearly. Other people come in, and 
when they go away everything looks bright to you. The 
effect of such persons' presence is soothing to a man, especially 
when he is very sensitive by reason of a slight sickness. I 
have known persons that came into my room when I was 
indisposed, whose faces did me more good than all the medi- 
cine they left. There was a courage, there was a hopefulness 
in it, there was a kind of sweet buoyancy in them. I have 



338 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING, 

talked with men of such natures that when they went away I 
felt cleaner ; and life looked larger and better to me by reason 
of the radiance which they threw over it. 

Now, persoift may be in one church or another ; they 
may be professors or non-professors of religion ; but then I 
say, that the divine element in man, the new life, is unmis- 
takable ; and when it is exerted on the minds of men they do 
not want to resist it — they cannot resist it. That distinctive 
clement is the very essence of the gospel itself. The power 
of the gospel does not lie in historical statements ; neither 
does it lie in systematic arguments : it lies in the living force 
of the higher moral nature of the church and of the commu- 
nity at large. There is just so much gospel in the world as 
there is of this sweet, higher nature, exerting itself on human 
life, and no more. 

Now, do not admit this too easily, because the inferences 
are very strong, which I am going to draw from it. 

If, then, this be the true idea of the gospel force in the 
world, we must be careful how we allow other things to 
become substitutes for it, or usurpers of its place. To a very- 
large extent, spiritual rapture has been substituted for it. It 
is not strange that men have not well understood and dis- 
criminated and denned the higher moral nature ; because 
they are less conversant with its elements than with any others. 
When, therefore, a man is carried off in the direction of 
the invisible, and has ecstatic emotions, and great joy in de- 
votional exercises or meditation, and especially when his ex- 
perience takes the form of rapture, and is high, and clear, 
and beautiful, men feel as though that man were living very 
near to God. He seems to them angelic. He may be, and 
he is more apt to be than one who has no such experience ; 
but true Christian experience does not always take on the 
form of rapture. If rapture is the fruit of this other experi- 
ence — the discharge of the malign element from the mind ; 
the putting down of the animal nature ; the subduing of the 
old man ; the bringing unto ascendency of the new man ; the 
development of tender-heartedness and lovingness — then it is 
very significant and very powerful; but there are many per- 
sons who are capable of going off at will into spiritual poetism. 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 339 

You do not misunderstand me when I say that one person 
has a mathematical genius, that another has an oratorical 
genius, that another has a poetic genius, that another 
has an artistic genfus, and that another has a musical 
genius ; but sometimes people are shocked when I say that 
a man has a praying genius ; and yet it is true that there 
are persons who have' a genius for praying. But ifc has not, 
necessarily, anything to do with character. Some persons 
are so configurated that they pray naturally. They are fluent 
in prayer — for there is a fluency in praying as much as in 
speaking. There is oratory toward God as well as oratory to- 
ward men. It is good or bad according to the circums"tances. 
There are persons who have unbounded facility in imagina- 
tion, in creation, in bringing near ten thousand interior, spi- 
ritual elements. There are men who can call up at any time 
a vision of heaven, and people it with glittering angels. 
There are men who can project their thoughts into the far 
future, and depict to themselves wonderful spiritual things. 
Persons may thus be almost carried away. But a man may 
be capable of all these things, and yet not have a true Chris- 
tian character. 

Mere spiritual rapture, then, as it is taught in many 
churches and by large sections in our time, if it is the fruit 
of foregoing sweetness, of the love-element in Christ Jesus, 
is not to be despised ; but when you are seeking the " higher 
life," as it is sometimes called, when you are uniting your- 
self to that class who are searching the "perfection," as it 
is called at other times, and suppose that spiritual ecstasy is 
the highest form of human experience, you put the effect for 
the cause. You substitute something else for that mood 
which is like the state of mind that was in Christ Jesus. 
What was that state of mind? God so loved the world that 
he sent Christ to die for it ; and Christ so loved the world 
that he died for it, and prayed for it as he died. So, one 
whose nature is based on Christ Jesus has discharged from 
his mind all malice. The whole operation of his thought 
and feeling and will is such that it carries no pain, no harm, 
but joy, goodness, well-wishing, peace, good will. He is a 
new man. 



340 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

Now, if that mood comes with higher and higher forms of 
rapture, it is all the better. I never like anthracite coal so 
well as I do cannel coal, because it will not blaze. It is like 
good matter-of-fact folks. It has a great deal of 1 ?*tf> and 
will carry it a great while ; but it is not so pleasant as cannel 
coal, which not only has plenty of heat, but has a blaze 
which goes roaring up the chimney. Imagination is a desir- 
able trait ; and it does not prevent the co-existence of all the 
other excellent traits. I like practical, sedate men, who are 
as full of goodness as a cluster is of sweetness, even if they do 
not have anything else ; but if they can break out into a blaze, 
also, I like them still better. 

See how natural it is that persons should confound the 
two things, and suppose because people have rapture that 
therefore they are distinctively patterns of Christian life. No, 
no ! The Christian life lies under all that> and is the cause of 
it. If there is nothing substantial under the rapture, if there 
are no coals, if there is only the blaze from some light, inflam- 
mable material, the flaming ecstacy is fictitious, it is a substi- 
tute, and not only a substitute, but a usurper of the true 
Christian experience, which begins and ends in love. 

Consider, too, the forces which have been exerted and the 
efforts expended to compass the truth as it presents itself to 
the intellect, as if that were the thing that the world seeks, 
and not the truth as it presents itself to the heart. There has 
been such an immense amount of intellectual teaching under 
the name of Christianity, the truth has been so dissected, so 
analyzed, and so brought into the form of ideas, that really 
men have frequently no comprehension of what is the true 
gospel nature of confessions, creeds, etc. 

Suppose I wanted to show a man what a magnificent thing 
an orchard was in October mellow days, and suppose I should 
take him into my cellar and show him a barrel which contain- 
ed cider that had turned to vinegar? He would say, " That 
is your orchard, is it? Well, the less I have of it the better I 
like it." Then I say, " If you do not like it, 1 will show you 
good old cider that has not turned to vinegar.''* He does not 
like that, either; so I show him new cider, and give him a 
straw. He says, " That is not so bad, but it does not answer 



THE SCIENCE OF RMHT LIVING %¥. 

at all to your description of an orchard." At length, finding 
that the man is so unreasonable, I say, ' l Then I will go back 
with you another step;" and I take him into the mill-house 
where the apples are in a trough, well crushed. The pulp, 
the seeds, the rinds and the stems lie together there in a 
mass ; and I say, "That is an orchard." "Well," he says, 
"it is a dirty, slushy orchard." At last, perceiving that he 
vg utterly discontented, and will not be satisfied with anything 
short of a real orchard, I take him out into the lot and show 
him the trees. "Ah!" he says, the moment his eye catches 
a sight of them, "now I understand all the rest. This is 
beautiful!" He stands in the orchard, and says, "I would 
not ask for anything better than to have a cottage here, and 
live in the midst of such a wealth of beauty, and be a culti- 
vator. Huw pleasant it would be to look upon the flowers 
and foliage, and listen to the songs of the birds, and gather in 
the rich, ripe fruit!" He thinks an orchard is splendid when 
he looks upon the actual thing. 

Here is the garden of the Lord — the Gospel. Here are 
the beautiful plants of righteousness, the precious fruits of 
the Spirit — humility, meekness, gentleness, patience, forgive- 
ness, tender-heartedness, joy, love — growing in the hearts of 
believei'3. A theologian comes in, and says, " I want to show 
you the Gospel." So he rolls out his old cider barrel full of 
vinegar. ' ' That is it, boiled down, fermented, brought to a 
pint." Yes, I should think it was ! He brings forward what 
he has crushed out of the living form, and declares that that 
is the Gospel ; but it is the second, the third, the fourth, the 
fifth remove from it. He points out the old still where the 
manufacturing processes are carried on, and where various 
elements, after having gone through men's thoughts, are 
made into a philosophy ; and he speaks of the result as though 
that were the Gospel. He begins with the existence of God ; 
then he goes through the history of revelation ; and then he 
deduces from revelation this, that, and the other doctrine. He 
states these things as regularly and with as much facility as a 
man would call the roll of a military company, referring to 
chapter and section, and giving hideous quotations from the 
dear old Bible, the writers of which never dreamed that they 



342 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

would be used to prove any such tilings as men seek to prove 
by them. He preaches a set of intellectual doctrines all the 
year round; then he turns about and preaches them over 
again ; then he preaches them cross- wise, every which way, 
as letters are sometimes written ; and that he calls preaching 
the Gospel. And the newspapers are full of diatribes against 
men who do not turn the same mill as they do ; who do not 
take the truth and intellectualize it; who do not convert 
heart-life into philosophical life, which is a totally different 
thing. The great mistake is made of supposing that 
an intellectual system is the Gospel. I aver that there 
is no Gospel except that which is in the lives of men. 
The wisdom of God in the production of gentleness, sweet- 
ness, patience, long-suffering, disinterestedness, and self- 
sacrifice — that is the Gospel. There is no other. It is not 
in the book; it is not in sermons; it is not in my discourses to 
you ; it is in you, or nowhere. Theologies are good for some 
things, but they lie when they tell you that they are the 
truth. 

And that which is true of intellectual systems is still more 
emphatically true of dynastic Christianity. Far be it from 
me to deride church-government. All churches must have 
some sort of government. Government belongs to the law of 
association. Whether you write it down or not, it will take 
care of itself. It will go wherever men come together. Let 
five persons meet for any object, and in less than twenty min- 
utes there will be a relative adjustment of their forces accord- 
ing to their individual peculiarities. Some will go higher 
than the others, and will have ascendency over them, in the 
nature of things. When you put ten pounds into one scale 
and twenty into another, it is not a matter of accommodation 
that the ten pounds go up and the twenty pounds go down; 
it is in accordance with nature- And when men are associ- 
ated with each other there is subordination and eleva- 
tion ; there are inferiorities and superiorities; and these 
things take care of themselves. There must be government 
in all churches. What sort of government it shall be depends 
upon the nationality of the people, their customs, and the 
habits of the time in which they live. Governments are like 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 343 

clothes, which adapt themselves to the climates in which they 
are worn. They are of no more account than garments which 
are taken off and thrown away when they are worn out, or 
cease to be useful, new ones being substituted for them. 

Do men to this day go back to the cedars of Lebanon for 
wood with which to build houses of the Lord ? I should as 
soon think of saying that all synagogues and churches should 
be constructed of materials brought from Asia, as to say that 
men must go back to apostolic times and do now just what 
the apostles did then. We are to imitate the apostles : but 
the imitation is to be, not in doing what they did, but in do- 
ing, like them, that which is fit in every case. 

A doctor is called to prescribe for a fever, and he gives a 
cooling draught. His young Esculapius, coming after him, 
is called to prescribe for congestive chills. He says, " My 
teacher gave a cooling draught, and I will give a cooling 
draught." He imitates his teacher exactly, like a fool. And 
there is no greater fool than a man who imitates just what the 
apostles did, instead of imitating the principle on which they 
did it. It is the inside that is to be followed, and not the 
outside. 

One of my boys comes in crying, and says, "Father, I ran 
against a lamp-post, and bruised my face." I say, " My son, 
do not run against lamp-posts." The next day he comes in 
again with another bruise on his face, and says, "I did not 
run against a lamp-post; I ran against a tree." "Well," I 
say, "do not run against lamp-posts nor trees." The next 
day he comes in, having had another whack, and says, " I did 
not run against a lamp-post nor a tree; I ran against an iron 
railing. " He had obeyed me, and yet he was hurt. But the 
spirit of my order was that he should not run against anything 
that would hurt him. "Well," you say, "the child that 
could not understand that would bean idiot" — but you ought 
not to, because in saying it you sweep away half the theologi- 
ans of creation. For what they have been imitating has been 
the stitches, the heme, the seams in the garments of the apos- 
tles. There has been an outside imitation; whereas they 
should have imitated that which belonged to the inside. This 
they have not been big enough to see. They have found it 



344 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

much easier to crawl around in the narrow limits of an animal, 
than to walk in the full largeness of a man. 

Now, there are substitutes for the gospel in the shape of 
government, church polity, and modes of worship; there are 
discussions with regard to the gospel in its relations to histo- 
ry, in its relations to philosophy, and in its relations to the 
state. I think I may say that, on the whole, nine- tenths of the 
power of the human soul since the advent of Christ has been 
expended upon the external, accidental concomitants of the 
gospel ; and that there has never been a time in which the 
whole force of any considerable body of Christians has been 
mainly and enthusiastically directed to the production of the 
real gospel — a manhood which has laid aside all malice, and 
is acting in the full power and enthusiasm of divine love. 
That is the gospel; and the producing of that is the very 
thing which men have not done, which they are not doing, 
and which they are railing at others for trying to do. There 
are to-day in the seat where God should be, grinning idols of 
theology, of church government, of church ordinances, of 
church polity, and of church worship. 

That living disposition, that active spirit, which consti- 
tutes the gospel, has been relatively neglected, while undue 
attention has been given to religious systems and philosophies 
and doctrines which are means, but not the end. 

The true test, then, of any church, or sect, or ministry, is 
not so much the knowledge which it gives, or the order which 
it secures, as its productiveness of new men in Christ Jesus, 
or of a higher degree of manhood; and it is an awful test. I do 
not know the man or the minister that can stand up under it. 
I cannot. When I see, where there is the least disturbance 
among you, where there is the slightest disagreement in a 
Sunday-school matter, that the old worthy members of my 
church, who have been many years under my ministry, act 
just like anybody else, and squabble, and, full of answerings, 
call back, and carry away hard feelings, I say to myself, " I 
have not made many men yet. My preaching has been as 
poor as any other minister's." One fails for one reason, and 
another for another; this man is running after ordinances, 
that man is running after doctrines, and I am running after 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 345 

sentiment ; and we all come short together. When I judge 
from what you are, I feel that I am about as poor a minister 
as I know of. 

Oh, that I might see a true ministry somewhere ! I would 
not fall down and worship, but I would count myself unworthy 
to loose the shoe-latchet of a man whose preaching was such 
as to bring together scores of Christian men who, in all things, 
under all pressures, in times of disturbance and in times of 
peace, still developed the sweetness, the beauty, the patience, 
the gentleness, the forbearance, the love, that is in Christ 
Jesus our dear Lord. 

You are living epistles, known and read of all men, and 
your poverty is the worst criticism that can be made on my 
ministry. Whatever you do that is good and excellent is so 
much commendation of me, and whatever you do that is less 
than that is so much condemnation of me. 

I remark, once more, that the only basis of Christian 
union in the world, as tested by the facts which I have thus 
far developed, is personal excellence. Men have been going 
about and endeavoring to unite people, but they will not suc- 
ceed in doing it in the way in which they have undertaken it. 

If I were sent out into the field and asked to make a bou- 
quet that should please everybody, and if I were to get some 
burdocks, and some stinking-jimson blossoms, and some sun- 
flowers, and five or six other coarse-looking, noxious-smelling 
weeds, I could not put them together so that everybody would 
like them. It would be impossible to arrange them so that there 
would be harmony between them. One would want to be in 
this or that place, and another would want to be in the same 
place. The burdock would say, " Let me be there; " the sun- 
flower would say, "No, let me there;" and the jimson blos- 
som would say, " Wait ! you don't smell half so strong as I 
do, let me be there; I belong in the most conspicuous place. " 
A pleasing bouquet could not be made out of these quarrel- 
some weeds. 

On the other hand, let'a man bring out of the garden, in- 
discriminately, a quantity of beautiful flowers, and I will defy 
him to put them together so poorly that everybody will not 
admire them. They will be lovely in spite of any carelessness 



346 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

with which they may be arranged. Could one possibly be so 
unskillful as to put twenty rose-buds together so that every- 
body would not be glad to have them ? It might be done 
better or worse, but in any case they would be so beautiful 
that any one would be pleased with them. 

Men want to bring churches together, but they are so 
stenchful, they are so un beautiful in their blossoming, they 
have so many repugnances, they are so rebellious, that you 
cannot unite them in their sectarian forms. You never 
ought to try. But just so quick as Christianity blossoms in 
men, and makes them beautiful, that moment they belong to 
all sects, and their fragrant and beautiful qualities find no 
trouble in harmonizing. 

There are no walls that can keep me from taking the 
good of any man's garden. In England I walked the roads 
and saw brick walls built ten feet high around gardens ; but 
there were the trees with their foliage, there were blossoming 
plants, there were birds singing merrily, and I had the joy 
of them, though I could not get over where they were. You 
may build fences about your gardens as much as you please, 
but I will see your trees, and smell your flowers, and listen to 
your birds. My eye is a universal rover ; my nose gathers 
tax and custom from every sweet-smelling blossom ; and my 
ear takes in all delightful sounds. 

So every true Christian is my brother or my sister. Who- 
ever is noble and self-sacrificing is mine. I do not care if it 
is he who sits in the Pope's chair, my invisible arm goes 
around that old man and hugs him for Christ's sake. I do 
not care what men's church connections are ; if they are only 
men in Christ Jesus, they belong to me. And if I can so 
live as to produce on those who come near me the effect of 
Christ's love, Christ's gentleness, Christ's humility, Christ's 
meekness, they cannot help owning me if they really want in 
their hearts to ally themselves to that which is good. I do 
not care whether they are in the church or out of the church, 
I am among them. They cannot; shut me out You can 
scourge a man who stands on the lower physical plane ; but a 
man who stands on higher spiritual ground you cannot ■ 
scourge. You cannot imprison him nor cast him out. Chas- 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 347 

tising hiin is like wounding spirits in whom the gash closes 
up as soon as the sword is drawn back. If you undertake to 
unite men by the outside, if you attempt to unite them by 
forms of doctrine, you will fail ; but if you undertake to 
bring them together on the ground of intrinsic disposition 
based on the Lord Jesus Christ, you cannot prevent their 
coming together. The great want in the matter of Christian 
union to-day is not a way, but men. It is the irresistible 
attraction of moral affinities that constitutes Christian union. 
There are various other things which prepare and smooth the 
way for it, but they are of no account without this vital 
element. Carving and ornamentation on a candlestick, and 
the candlestick itself, are all very well, but what does a can- 
dlestick amount to without a candle ? All these methods 
that take away offensive creeds, and forms, and ordinances, 
and arrogant governments and pretensions, are well enough, 
but there can be no Christian union until there are men in 
the different sects who shall lift themselves out of the old 
man and into the new man in Christ Jesus, so that they shall 
begin to know each other interiorly, and form that atmosphere 
in which such union essentially consists. 

Lastly, let me bring this matter home to you j)ersonally, 
my dear Christian brethren, as a very solemn test. If this is 
the testimony of the New Testament (and I am not afraid of 
any investigation that you may make into the subject), it is a 
question that I have a right to put to every one of you who 
supposes he is a Christian — not, When were you converted ? 
and not, How were you converted ? but, To what were you 
converted ? To belief ? To sectarianism ? To devotion ? 
Have you been converted to that kind of spirit which was in 
Christ Jesus, ' i who, being in the form of Cod, thought it 
not robbery to be equal with God ; but made himself of no 
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and 
was made in the likeness of men ; and, being found in fashion 
as a man, humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, 
even the death of the cross " ? Have you been converted to 
the spirit of that Jesus who rose and girded himself with a 
towel, and washed his reluctant disciples' feet, saying, " As 
I, your Lord and Master, do this to you, so ye must do it to 



348 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

one another"? Have you been converted to the spirit of 
that Personage who declared that in his spiritual kingdom 
those who were willing to do the lowest offices were the ones 
who stood highest ? Have you been converted to humility, 
to self-sacrifice, to unfailing kindness, and to love which casts 
out fear as well as wrath ? Have you been converted to the 
new man who is in Christ Jesus ? It is for you in your own 
meditation to search your heart and answer these questions to 
yourself. 

Do you think that you have been growing in the divine 
life ? Many of you think you have grown during the last 
year : in what respects have you grown ? Have you grown in 
externals ? That is well. Have you grown in that knowl- 
edge which is outside ? That is not ill. But have you con- 
sciously grown in sweetness ? 

It is a shame for an apple that has set in the spring or in 
the early summer to be just as sour when November comes 
round as it was early in the season. You would not keep in 
your orchard a tree that bore such apples. You would cut it 
down. And yet, how many trees there are in the Lord's 
garden whose apples grow sour rather than sweet ! How 
many men there are who came into the church five years ago, 
perhaps, and are no sweeter, if they are not sourer, than they 
were then ! 

Now, how has it been with you ? Has it been the acid, 
acrid juice, or the saccharine juice, that has been developed 
in your nature ? You can tell ; or those who live with you 
can! It is a question that every man ought to put to himself. 
Every man ought to make an inventory, every man ought to 
take an account of stock, respecting his inner life. Every 
man ought to inquire what the unwritten books of his life, 
the books of his soul's consciousness, show. 

What is the power of your life, Christian brethren ? You 
are influential, and you seek place and opportunity to do 
good : what is the power on w T hich you rely for doing good ? 
Is it that of the external man, is it that of outward wisdom, 
or is it that which consists in the fact that your soul carries 
so much of the divine fervor and of the divine bounty that 
wherever you go God goes with you ? If that be your power, 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 349 

no man can narrow your sphere, and no man can hinder you. 
If you have not that power ; if you have not that spirit of 
God which fits you for the emergencies and trials of life ; if 
that Christ is not in you, who is not only the hope of glory 
but the spring of all moral influences, then you are weak 
indeed. By just so much as you lack Christ you are of the 
old man, and are of the flesh, fleshly. 

This is our last Sabbath of the year. It is the last Sunday 
morning of the year. I would to Cod that every one of us 
might disrobe himself of much of the false covering that he 
has worn. Would that we might throw aside the patched 
and fantastic garments that have covered us. Would that we 
might put away the old and lower man. Would that, on this 
bright and blessed morning, we might sink our faults and 
transgressions out of sight, and, as Cod says, let them be 
remembered and mentioned no more forever. Would that 
we might begin a new year, Christian brethren, as Christ's 
men, inwardly, dispositionally, and from this time forth, with 
open throat, like flowers, pour out sweet fragrance, and, like 
trees, bear abundant fruits of the Spirit to the honor and 
glory of our God. 



350 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

Almighty God, we draw near to thee not abashed because w« 
are inferior; nor are we separated from thee because we are un 
worthy ; for thy great grace and goodness have taken away the sense 
of fear, and with it much of the sense of shame. We are drawn to 
thee by a graciousness that makes us forget our poverty. Thou art 
better to us than we know how to be to men ; and yet, when the 
needy come, it is in the power of the gracious heart so to overshine 
them that they forget their poverty, and forget everything but the 
kindness in which they stand, and which warms them with sweet 
life. Thou dost pour upon those who draw near to thee such tides of 
graciousness, and such sensible love, that they forget their sinfulness, 
and are conscious that they are children of God brought home by 
that grace which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So we come to thee 
remembering more of thy goodness than of our unworthiness, and 
aspiring to stand in the might and glory of thy nature rather than 
of our own, rejoicing that in the economy of thy grace, as the sun 
brings forth all things upon the earth, so the Sun of righteousness 
is bringing forth upon men all that is good and perfect. As the small - 
est flowers are not shamed when they look up into the sun, whose 
children they are, and toward whom the sun moves in its mightiness, 
and gives of its warmth according to its own nature, and not accord- 
ing to the nature of the flower; so we stand in thy presence, rejoic- 
ing in thee for what thou art, and not thinking of what we are. We 
rejoice that there is this perf ectness of love which casts out fear, and 
checks our sense of distance from thee, and takes away from us all 
feeling of shame and humiliation, and lifts us up into the blessedness 
of heavenly relations. We are of thee as children are of their 
parents ; and love banishes everything else, gives its own law, and 
brings its own fruit. 

We bless thee for the experiences we have had. We bless thee 
for all the joy that has come to us. We bless thee for the interpreta- 
tions of our life which thou hast vouchsafed to us. We bless thee for 
all the providences which have been messengers of God to us and 
brought us gifts. We thank thee for those gifts which have brought 
sorrows as much as .for those which have brought gladness. We 
know that the earth needs its night as much as its day, and that we 
need darkness as much as light. Thou sendest us winds that make 
us strong; and we thank thee for these; for we know that those 
things on which the wind doth not blow do not form wood. Were it 
not for troubles we should never be stiff or strong in the midst of the 
burdens of life. Thy storms are all nourishing storms. Thy strokes 
are the strokes of love. Thou art administering thy chastisements 
with fidelity ; and thou art a better judge than we are of what we 
should have, and when and where we should have it. We rejoice to 
believe that in the circle of thine administration there are infinitely 



THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 351 

Jiore "aws and providences than we know of by which thou art 
minutely and carefully watching over everything that concerns us. 

We desire, O Lord, to rejoice in the thought that thy greatness ia 
such that all our measures come short. We can have no sense or 
knowledge of the grandeur of the relations of tLy thought and soul 
and purpose to the economies of life. So much as we know of tha* 
which thou hast revealed fills us with confidence that when the rest 
shall come it will be in analogy with this, and carry us up, so that 
thou wilt prove to be not only greater than we think thee to be, but 
infinitely better ; that thy graciousness shall be found to be such as 
shall disarm all our fears, and bring in their place hope and encour- 
agement, and give power to the hidden man within our souls ^ 
and that we shall be more than satisfied, and break forth in exulta- 
tion, and join with those in the heaven above, and around about thy 
throne, in giving praise and dominion and glory to thee forever and 
forever. 

We pray that we may not hide ourselves from the summer of thy 
heart— that we may be open to thee in such a way that all the chill- 
ing frosts of winter may depart from us ; that every one of us may 
grow in grace ; that the fruit of the spirit may be in us, and that we 
may be as gardens of the Lord, full of fragrance, full of beauty, and 
full of glowing fruit. 

We pray that thou wilt help every one in thy presence in the 
work of his life, by which he.seeks to put off the old man, and put on 
the new man, created in righteousness. We pray that we may not 
any of us be discouraged as we struggle against undue pride, unlaw- 
ful desires, the appetites and passions of our lower nature. May we 
remember that we are in the battle as good soldiers, that whether it 
go against us or for us we are still to maintain our place and fight 
manfully, knowing who is our Captain and what is our Armory, that 
in the end even those who are cast down shall not be forsaken, that 
those who are wounded shall be healed, and those who are slain 
shall be brought more gloriously to life ; and may we feel that it !* 
not in vain that we are serving thee. So, through darkness and 
through light, through rude ways and through ways that are smooth, 
through discouragements and through encouragements, grant that 
we may have f orevermore such a sense of Jesus Christ formed in us, 
the hope of glory, that life shall seem to us worth having, and its 
^nds worth striving for. While we do not disdain thine outward 
blessings, though we thank thee for the household, for food, for rai- 
ment, for society, for its relations, for all worldly things which we 
are enabled to enjoy, yet we desire, O Lord, to put highest the work 
which thou art attempting to carry on in our souls. We desire to 
look upon invisible things, and to discern afar off the inner home of 
the soul, with its companionships. May we prepare ourselves so that 
when we pass beyond the bounds of time we may stand in the plen- 
itude of glory, and inherit with great joy that inheritance whicti 
awaits us, but which we have not seen. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon the services of the sanc- 
tuary to-day. Grant, we beseech of thee, that thy truth may come 
more to us, not falling on the outward ear, but sinking into the inner 



352 THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT LIVING. 

soul. By it may we be strengthened and inspired and carried forward 
in the Christian life. Bless thy churches. May all thy servants be 
clothed with that spirit which is from on high, and be able to make 
kaown to men Jesus Christ as the great Power of salvation. 

We pray that thou wilt be with all those who are in distant fields 
of labor. We pray for those who are working for thy cause in foreign 
lands. Though they may not now see the fruit of their service, may 
they have faith that they will see it, by and by— in the world to come 
if not in this world. 

We pray for all in distant parts of our own land, who are amidst 
trials and sickness and solitude and hindrances of every kind. Still 
may they patiently do their work, laying foundations which in their 
lifetime may never rise above the ground, but on which others shall 
build. May they be content to be builders of foundations, so that 
they be foundations of the temple of the Lord. 

Bless, we pray thee, all classes of our citizens. Bless especially 
those who are most ignorant and needy; those who are subject to 
wrongs— particularly to violent wrongs which are inflicted upon 
them by their own passions through ignorance. 

We pray that education may prevail, and that the whole land may 
be intelligent, and that it shall be an intelligence which shall take 
hold of morality and true piety. 

Remember the President of these United States, and all who are 
joined with him in authority. Bless the Congress assembled. Bless 
all governors and legislators and judges. Bless all that bear rule. 
May they rule diligently and in the fear of God. 

Bless the nations of the earth. We thank thee for those steps 
which are being taken toward brotherhood. We pray for the divine 
blessing upon all those influences which conspire to disarm the 
bloody hand, and bring in the heart that would shed its own blood 
rather than that the blood of another should be shed. Let that glori- 
ous day come when all races shall know thee and be joined to thee. 

And to thee, Father, Son, and Spirit, shall be praises, forever- 
more. Amen. 



*-+- 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we pray that thou wilt add thy blessing to the word 
spoken. Give to us that ripening spirit without which there is no 
summer for us. We never felt so much the need of thy presence and 
of thy divine, quickening spirit, which pierces to the dividing asunder 
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and in- 
tents of the heart, as now. O Lord our God, thou of such love *that 
thou didst die for us, and art living for us a life that is more glorious 
than dying, come among thy people. Cleanse them, inspire them, 
guide them, that they may become perfect men in Christ Jesus. 

Help us to sing again to thy praise, then send us with joy and 
gladness to our several homes, and finally bring us to our Father's 
house in heavon, through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. A.men. 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 



" Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord : his going 
forth is prepared as the morning ; and he shall come unto us as the 
rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. O Ephraim, what 
shall I do unto thee ? O Judah, what shall I do unto thee ? for your 
goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away." 
— Hos. vi., 3. 4. 



This is a voice that comes to us from a strange land, far 
away in antiquity — a mournful voice of expostulation. But 
the thing which aroused the prophet's sad lament is as fa- 
miliar to us as it was to those who lived in that day. " As 
face answereth to face in water, so the heart of man to man," 
in all the different nations and in all the different ages of the 
world. The same temptations follow the same passions, and 
substantially the same experiences are the result, somewhat 
colored, shaped a little differently, wearing a different cos- 
tume, that is, but in their inner nature absolutely the same, 
in ancient days and in modern. We find the same expostula- 
tions and the same recognitions in the New Testament. The 
inconstancy of men in goodness ; the facility with which they 
are excited ; the quickness with which they recognize the 
better way ; the rapidity with which they forget it — these are 
themes of the Old Testament and of the New alike, and also 
of observing men in profane literature. 
" Many are called, but few are chosen." 

Of all the seed sown, but one parcel — that which fell into 
good ground — came to good account ; while that which fell 

Sunday Mobnino, January 4, 1874. Lesson: Psa. adv. Hymns (Plymouth 

Collection) : Nos. 104, 668. ' 



356 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

by the wayside, in the road, on the rock, and among thorns, 
.perished. 

The topic is the inconstancy, the remission, of religions 
emotion. If one considers the prodigious scope of the themes 
that are brought to bear upon the hnman soul under the gen- 
eral name of religion, it is surprising that man, once aroused, 
should ever know quiet again. The nature of God, and his 
divine government ; the destiny of men ; the everlasting 
future ; right, with its benefits ; wrong, with its penalties — 
these are adapted to excite all the feelings of the human soul, 
and to keep them in a state of vital interest ; and yet, in point 
of fact, we perceive that men do not abide continuously and 
long under the impressions which are excited in them, or 
under the emotions which are developed in them, by the 
presentation of the great truths of religion. There is a vast 
amount of tremulous excitement, there is a great deal of feel- 
ing, which runs for an hour very deeply; and yet, the tran- 
sientness of religious life and of religious feeling is just as 
much a matter of remark to-day as it was a thousand years 
ago — and just as much a matter of remark in the church as it 
was in the synagogue. 

The grand obvious reason will be, of course, in the nature 
of the human soul ; in its proclivity downward and backward 
towards the animal, on which it is based, and from which it 
sprang. The love of the world ; the power of selfish in- 
stincts ; the force of habits which, like springs pressed, or like 
trees blown by the wind, fly back again so soon as the im- 
pressing cause is removed — these are the more common and 
obvious topics of remark. Men have a very brief religious 
experience because the power of the world is so strong over 
them. 

It is not, however, in that direction that I propose to speak 
this morning. There are, besides all these great causes 
which carry with them an implication of wickedness, other 
reasons which, although they may not be without blame, 
turn largely on the want of knowledge. There are hundreds 
and thousands of persons who do not want to be conformed 
to the world ; who do not desire to have transient fluxes of 
feeling. They would rather not be like mountain brooks 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 357 

which are full when it rains, and are empty as soon as the 
clouds have passed. They study, they pray, they inquire, ask- 
ing, " How shall I continue in that state which is so blessed? 
How shall I prolong those experiences which I crave?" To 
such there is a line of instruction which, although it will 
carry more or less the sense of blameworthiness, will, "after 
all, I think, throw light upon their understandings, rather 
than pressure upon their consciences, which, frequently, are 
already too sensitive. 

There is a vast amount of error, I remark, first, in the 
doctrine of the uses of feeling, and therefore of its degrees, 
and of the possibility of equal emotion on the part of all. If 
religion were the putting of persons through a divine process 
from which each one emerged amply equipped, and equipped 
like every other, then every one might demand that his expe- 
rience should be like that of every other one ; but such is not 
the case. Men are brought into the religious state with 
all their conditions of constitution, or of soul and mind, with 
all their conditions of education or non-education, with all 
their misteachings and prejudices ; and they begin at differ* 
ent points. Each one has problems of his own in life. 
Often, when men begin a Christian life, it is with the 
idea that to be a Christian means to have an overflowing 
fountain of joyful and consecrated religious emotion. What- 
ever may be their purpose, however much they may persist in 
right living, however profound may be their sense of the con- 
secration of soul and body to the will of the Lord Jesua 
Christ, if there be an absence of tumultuous feeling, deep 
and joyful, they sit in judgment upon themselves ; or if emo- 
tion comes to them but seldom, and slenderly at that, they 
pass upon themselves judgment according to the measure of 
feeling which they have seen in other people. So it comes to 
pass that a man of great heart and great emotion, living a 
godly and Christian life, while he does a great deal of good 
in the community, may unconsciously be the means of op- 
pressing weaker natures, where they take from him their 
notion of what a man should feel ; though God in his provi- 
dence deals with each particular man according to the method 
which is adapted to him. 



358 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

Now, feeling is not to be sought as a luxury, nor is it to be 
sought with a continuity which shall make it like the pleasant 
sound of the wind among the leaves in summer, or like the 
sound of music at a banquet. The object of feeling is to be 
an operative one. To be sure there is pleasure in it ; but as 
we e'at, not for the pleasure of eating, but for the more 
fundamental reason that by food we build up the wasting- 
body, and eat as an absolute necessity, though there has been 
attached to eating the accompanying pleasure of sapid food ; 
so feeling has a use, though it carries with it a pleasurable 
experience. The design of feeling is not to create pleasure 
alone. So that persons who enter a Christian life, and seek 
to promote such a life by the experience of feeling, exquisite, 
abundant, and continuous, may think that they are seeking 
religion, while often they are seeking self. A man may be 
actuated by a spirit of self-indulgence in demanding that he 
shall be pleased with moral sensations or moral experiences as 
much as in demanding that he shall be surrounded by phys- 
ical objects of pleasure. 

What, then, is to be the limit of feeling ? How much 
feeling is a man to have ? Enough to maintain- himself 
vitally. Enough to impel him on every side to the duties 
which belong to his station and to his nature. If one has 
latent feeling, that is enough ; that is to say, if latent feeling 
is really emotion taking on the form of action, it is as truly 
emotion as that which effervesces and overflows. The most 
powerful loves in life are latent. Although father and 
mother often disclose much feeling toward their children, 
yet, after all, ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the real love 
of father and mother is shown in deeds done — in watching, 
in care, in thinking, and in provision. Everywhere in life 
true and wholesome feeling tends to clothe itself in action. 
And although religious feeling, as such, rising up like some 
columnar sound, in a band of music, merely for its own pleas- 
urable existence, is not an undesirable thing, yet if you seek 
it with the impression that that is the distinctive feeling of 
religious life, it misleads, and oftentimes harms. I have 
known many persons who gave up a thousand ethical duties 
for the sake of having experience, as it is called. There are 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 359 

not a few people who devote themselves to meditation, to 
exercises in the closet, and to meetings, with a desire to so 
attune their inward selves as to bring forth emotions, not for 
the sake of making their life more fruitful, and others hap- 
pier, but in order to come nearer to what they believe to be 
the state of soul which God requires of them. 

This is the old notion of those days when convents were 
founded, and caves were resorted to as retreats ; when men 
thought the way to go to heaven was to get out of life and 
away from men ; when there was the impression that a man's 
safety depended upon his being separated from physical and 
social circumstances ; when men were seeking after an ideal 
perfectness in the individual. 

It is a notion which has come down to us in many lines. 
There are many people nowadays who are acting in accord- 
ance with it, and attempting to be eminent in their Christian 
life by having a full-orbed emotive experience all the time. 
And this is not bad when it is accompanied with fruit ; -it is 
not bad when it is the water that turns the wheel of life ; but 
it is not only bad, it is eminently pernicious, as a substi- 
tute for practical living. 

In this connection I should add that a great many persons 
are constituted so that depths and currents of feeling such as 
others have are quite impossible to them. It is possible for 
all persons to experience enough of emotion to constitute a 
motive toward right living ; but there are multitudes of per- 
sons who, by their nature and organization, are incompetent 
to produce very deep, certainly very prolonged, tides of emo- 
tion ; and if they are seeking them, they are like persons who 
seek for gold in a stratum that never bears gold. 

Secondly, the law of the production of feeling must be 
better understood ; for there are many persons who seem to 
think that feeling so exists in men that one has but to wish 
for it, long for it, pray for it, try for it, to have it come. No 
person trying on any other side of the mind would ever come 
to such a conclusion. Suppose I were to say to you, " I want 
you every one to feel caution," would you feel it ? Try to 
feel it ; can you feel caution by trying ? Suppose I were to 
say to this congregation, ' ' Now, all of you feel mirthful," 



360 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

would you feel mirthful ? Commanding you to be mirthful, 
or wishing you to be mirthful, does not produce mirth in you. 
But I do not need to command you, to cause you to feel cau- 
tion. If I were to lift up my voice and cry, Fire ! you would 
instantly feel caution, and the fear that goes with it. Or, if 
I were to present to your minds some idea that was witty 
or humorous, I should not need to command you to feel 
the sense of humor or wit : you would feel it as a mat- 
ter of course. Feeling follows causation. He that wants 
any special phase of feeling must have the cause of that 
feeling. 

What, then, are the causes which produce feeling ? They 
are various. There are certain ideas or elemental truths 
which produce the sense of awe ; there are others that pro- 
duce the sense of faith ; there are others that produce love ; 
there are others that produce joy ; there are others that pro- 
duce sorrow ; there are others that produce remorse ; and 
whoever wants a given feeling must understand what are the 
truths which stand connected with its production. 

Many persons t.re bom into the Christian life, they be- 
come members of the church, they attempt to live right, and 
they say to themselves, ' ( It is my duty to venerate God ;" 
and fchey try to do it ; but can anybody have veneration for 
God as the result of mere wishing ? He that would venerate 
God must bring before his mind those clearly vital concep- 
tions of God which shall lift before the soul the vastness and 
grandeur of his nature. When he does that he has no need 
of commanding the feeling. Then it comes of itself. In 
other words, there are many persons whose feelings fail them. 
They long to be better ; they feel right ; they seek to do well ; 
but their feelings are constantly deliquescing, because they do 
not understand the law of the production of feeling ; because 
they do not recognize the simple fact that feeling must have a 
cause in some truth which is presented to the soul. The ex- 
ceptions to. this are only in appearance ; examine any instance 
of the arousal of feeling, and you will not fail to find its 
normal, adequate cause. 

Thirdly, we are to take into consideration the law of con- 
tinuity of feeling in men and to look into the case of those 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 361 

who are mourning because they have so little feeling, though 
they strive after it. 

There he those*who think it is their duty to have a con- 
tinual sense of the divine presence — which is an absolute im- 
possibility ; who think it is their duty to abide in a continual 
sense of love — which is an absolute impossibility ; who think 
they are to feel reverence, all the time — which is an absolute 
impossibility. For feeling, when it becomes continuous, is 
insanity. Take your best feeling and let it run on all day 
long, and all night in your waking hours, and the next 
morning, — and your father, if he knows what you are about, 
will send for the doctor. It is necessary that you should 
have medicine and regimen ; for you are on the road to in- 
sanity. Emotions never run thus in channels. They are al- 
ways changing. They rise and fall. They are like waves 
that run up, and then break and fall down, another running 
up behind or from one side, and breaking, and falling down, 
and another, and another. If one observes a wholesome 
mind, he will find that there are scores of feelings which 
alternate, first one being in the ascendancy and then another. 
The health of a man's mind is determined, not by the con- 
tinuity of any one feeling, but by the succession of feelings 
which he has. The on-going of the impulses of a wholesome 
mind is like the progress of a tune. The theme runs high or 
low, through all manner of notes. It is not a monochord. 
There is not one continuous sound running through it. 
Neither has it one unvarying pitch. 

Nothing is worse for a person than to attempt all the time 
to have just one state of mind because he thinks that to be a 
Christian is to have God in one's thoughts all the while. You 
cannot do it, and you ought not to try to do it. It is un- 
natural. If it seems anywhere to be commanded, the com- 
mand is only metaphorical, or to be applied in a general 
sense. 

I am always a patriot, but I do not think of my country 
in a way which inflames a distinct feeling of patriotism once 
where I think of other things a thousand times. I love all 
my children, and yet I pass ten hours without thinking of 
them where I pass one in thinking of them. I love art ; and 



3G2 RELIQIOUS CONSTANCY. 

yet sometimes a whole month will roll away in which I do 
not think of it. The sense of art is there, and the secret in- 
fluences of it are on me ; but I seldom bring it up as a matter 
of distinct consciousness ; and when I do it alternates with 
many other things. 

Even an artist must eat and drink ; he must visit and be 
visited ; he must be often broken in upon. There are many 
things besides art which are thought of even by the most 
enthusiastic artist. Woe be to that genius who is so allied to 
one thing that the moment he has turned aside from that he 
is all at sea ! It is the curse of those who are called geniuses 
that they move in a narrow channel, and are at home nowhere 
else, so that when they wander on either side they lack adap- 
tation to a healthy, broad and true manly development. 

And this is just as true in religion as anywhere else. A 
man who is trying all the time to keep himself to the thought, 
"lam a sinner, I am a sinner, I am a sinner," is not only a 
sinner, but is, without knowing it, a fool. He lacks the first 
element of knowledge. No man acts in any other direction 
in such a way as this. In such cases the conscience has been 
acuminated, intensified, and men fall into unnatural experi- 
ences, and try to retain them ; and finding that they cannot, 
they complain and say, "I cannot keep my religions feelings. 
All my purposes and resolutions in regard to a higher life 
are transient." Of course nature, which is grace in your 
case, is too mighty for your folly. 

Then there is the law of the inspiration of distinctively 
moral feeling. This is a matter which should be more 
closely studied, perhaps, than almost any other head that 
I have mentioned. There is an impression that religious 
feeling is the direct product of the divine Spirit. It may 
be, as harvests are the product of the sun ; but the sun 
works differently on different growths. It works in one way 
on the leaves of a sweet apple-tree, and in another way on 
those of a sour apple-tree. It works in one way to produce 
rye, in another way to produce barley, and in another way to 
produce indian corn. It works in one way upon clay, and 
in another way upon ice. 

Now, the moral or spiritual part of a human being, that 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 363 

part which makes him a man and not an animal — that comes 
from God. It is universal mind, moving in universal space, 
that gives us vitality, and inspires our reason and moral emo- 
tions in all their variations. I hold, as much as any one, that 
a true moral feeling is an inspiration of God ; but it is an 
inspiration which acts differently in different persons. 

I recollect very well when it was thought that no person 
could be soundly a Christian who had not a climacteric expe- 
rience, bearing relation first to seriousness, then to conviction, 
then to conversion, and then to joy and a developed Christian 
life, I remember very well when I used to think that no 
man could be truly converted, and become a good orthodox 
Christian, unless he derived his inspiration from a good or- 
thodox source. He must show that it was under such and 
such training that he was aroused and saved. He must show 
that his salvation bore such and such relations to the great 
fundamental truths of Christianity. 

Now, far be it from me to say that the great truths of the di- 
vine nature, of the government of God, of man's nature, and of 
human responsibility are not more nearly concerned than any 
others in the production of emotion, and in the change of 
men's lives — they are ; but I hold to the sovereignty of God. 
I hold that no man can say that God acts in so many ways, 
and only in so many ways. I hold that the divine Spirit, in 
acting upon the hearts of men, acts by innumerable influ- 
ences, and in innumerable channels, besides those which we 
are accustomed to reckon as moral inspirations. For example, 
there is one class whose emotions distinctly run to ideas. All 
men's emotions follow reason. Eeason is a window through 
which light comes into the soul. Eeason is to men what light 
is to all manner of colors. Everybody feels, on account of 
some foregoing action of reason. But there are some men 
who have no distinct conceptions of moral emotion except 
those which evolve ideas — that is, differentiated truths, or a 
series of propositions. 

Take the mind of old John Calvin — one of the most in- 
cisive, one of the strongest, one of the ablest, and one of the 
noblest of men in respect to mere intellection — a kind of 
Christian Plato, without Plato's heart. The great trouble with 



364 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

John Calvin was that he had no heart. But as a profound 
thinker, as a clear observer, as a reasoner without chaff to 
his wheat, there has seldom been such a man as he. And 
if you present to a man like him views of God, of duty, 
of life, and of the life to come, which shall take hold of his 
moral nature, they must be not simply consecutive ideas, but 
ideas arranged, formulated ; and they must be presented so 
as to answer to the intellectual constitution of his mind. 
There are many who belong to this class. 

There are many men that have been trained as lawyers 
who could not go with any profit to a Methodist meeting 
where there was a voluminous outpouring of the whole 
brotherhood, with noise and clamor and sensuous excite- 
ment ; they would be filled with repulsion and disgust by such 
modes of worship. And you might take them into the small- 
est congregation where some Doctor Skinner or some Doctor 
"Williams was discussing a theological question, no matter 
with what slow reading, no matter with what want of em- 
phasis, no matter with what inevitable dullness, and they 
would be interested. There would be clear, beautiful, logi- 
cal ideas presented one after another, and they would sit 
and take them in, and smack their lips, and say, " That is 
the kind of preaching for me," and would go home feeling 
that they had been fed ; while their children would go home 
wishing that father and mother would go somewhere else to 
church. 

We are accustomed to say of such men that they are men 
of ideas — that they have no emotion. They may have no 
distinctively strong emotion; but they have some emotion; 
and what they have follows ideas, and produces ideas ; and 
they are to be dealt with by means of ideas ; but they are 
not to rail against nor to despise your fluxes of feeling. 

A man says to me, " Do you mean to say that when 
you walked in the gallery of the Luxembourg and in the 
Louvre you rose nearer to a conscious perception of God than 
ever before in your life ? Do you pretend to tell me that 
God blessed vague art, miscellaneous forms and colors, and 
that these things acted on your mind so as to bring you into 
communion with the future, with heaven, with spiritual in- 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 365 

telligences, and, above all, with God ? Do you claim that 
such moonshine did you good, and ripened summer in 
your soul?" My reply is, "I do claim just that; and who 
art thou, that thou shouldst tell God that he shall not im- 
press my moral feeling through the esthetic faculty because 
he impresses yours through the intellectual faculty ?" 

I never was so near the gate of heaven, I never was so like 
a globe of fire on every side, as when I first walked in those 
galleries. Literally, some of the old historic representations 
which I saw there lifted me above the realization of this 
lower sphere. Notably, at Stratford-on-Avon, the home of 
the great poet, the rooms which he occupied, the church, 
the Avon itself, gently flowing — these so raised me out of 
my physical consciousness that I seemed to myself like an 
ethereal being, transparent and invisible. I actually could 
not feel the ground on which I walked, my whole system 
was so cerebrated. And when I went to Paris it was just 
so there. Alas ! that it should be only first experiences 
that have power to affect one so. Never before' did I have 
such a sense of my sinfulness and of my unworthiness as I 
had when walking, hour after hour, through those chambers. 
Never before did I so wonder that God should love me. 
Never before did I have such thoughts of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The impressions which I then received were revela- 
tions to me. 

The beauty-loving element, then, has power to open the 
door of the soul, and produce profound moral emotions. 
You say it ought not to ; but I say it does ; you say it is not 
natural, but I say it is true ; you say it is not orthodox, but I 
say it is divine — and you can settle it between you ! 

When, therefore, a man says, " I cannot be a Christian 
when I go to church ; I do not feel interested in anything 
there ; but when I go into the fields, on the Sabbath day, and 
walk up and down amid the scenes of nature, I am conscious 
of rising to a feeling of gratitude, and I am rebuked for a 
great many unworthy things." When a man says this, if it 
is an excuse for riding on Sunday after a fast horse, I con- 
demn it. If you want pleasure on the Sabbath, say so, and 
take the responsibility of it ; but if you are an honest man, 



366 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

and on due consideration you think it is better for you to 
spend the day surrounded by God's works, walking in the 
meadows, on the bank of some beautiful stream, or along the 
edge of some delightful forest ; if you sincerely believe that 
such a use of Sunday tends more to raise your thoughts 
heavenward and God-ward than any other, do not be ashamed 
to stand up against deacon and class-leader and minister and 
say so. So far as you are concerned it may be true. It is as 
right for some persons to have the chamber of the soul un- 
locked by the key of nature as it is for others to have it un- 
locked by the key of the Catechism. For God is sovereign, 
and he works as he pleases, and he pleases to work in many 
different ways. 

There are others (and I think this class embraces the 
great majority of mankind) whose moral feelings are largely 
dependent upon the imagination. If I were asked to tell 
what two elements constitute the whole revelation of God, I 
should say fact and fiction. The framework of the Bible 
may, almost beyond peradventure, be said to be one flowing 
history from beginning to end ; and woven in it, and through 
it, and over it, and around it, is fiction. There is the historic 
element, and there is the imaginative element, by which it is 
made up. One reason why I feel that it is divine is that 
men, in the earlier and later stages of the world's develop- 
ment, have been dependent on the power of these two ele- 
ments. You have a perception of things invisible, and you 
have also a perception of things visible. The imagination, 
working with the reason, constitutes faith, generically con- 
sidered. There are specific kinds of faith — there is a faith 
that works by fear, there is a faith that works by hope, there are 
faiths that work in various ways; but the fundamental element 
of faith is reason so etherealized by the imagination that it can 
see things not present which exist, that it can create new 
things, and that it can form images of things that have no 
existence. - It is the imagination that makes fables ; it is the 
imagination that makes parables ; it is the imagination that 
makes petty fictions for the entertainment and instruction of 
children ; it is the imagination that makes fairy tales, le- 
gends, myths, by which the young are inducted to knowl- 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 367 

edge. Nations, in their childhood, are largely brought to 
intelligence and culture through the medium of the imagina- 
tion. And that which is true of the beginnings of national 
and individual life in this respect ought to be true of their 
endings. Every man should have a susceptibility to moral 
emotion through the imaginative element. 

Tell me how any man can read the Apocalypse of John 
and appreciate it without imagination. How shall I stand 
and hear the thunderings that roll in that book ; how shall I 
understand its songs and triumphs ; how shall I see the city, 
and its processions of rejoicing saints ; how shall I be filled 
with wonder at the marvelous scenes which are depicted ; 
how shall I be brought into sympathy with all that is in 
heaven, and all that is on earth, and all that is under the 
earth, and all that is in the sea ; how shall I rise up and come 
into communion with those angelic hosts that lift their voices 
in praise to God— how shall I do these things if I have not 
imagination ? How can you, mathematician, stand in the 
presence of such representations, and see anything ? Logi- 
cian, what do you see when you read them ? Mere reasoner, 
what do you see ? Ye that are children of the imagination 
see all these things. Shout is joined to shout, joy touches 
joy, triumph takes hold on triumph, and the best nature in 
man comes forth under the divine influence of imagination. 
We have been idolaters of reason, and if we sprang from New 
England we have been particularly idolators of logic. These 
be thy gods, Yankee ! 

Now, the whole history of the development of Christian- 
ity in Oriental lands, and in all lands, shows that under the 
divine economy the master instrument by which manhood is 
created is religion. Take, for example, the old way of think- 
ing of God. When God came to Jacob, he came as the God of 
his father. He did not say, " I am Jehovah," he did not say, 
" I am the God of the whole heaven and of the whole earth," 
he did not say, " I am the Lord God of omnipotence ;" he 
said "I am the God of thy father." What is the difference 
between these several declarations ? The last one touches the 
domestic, the home imagination. If he had said, " I am the 
God that was feared by your father, and I am a proper object 



368 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

for your reverence, and for that of your posterity," the effect 
would not have been the same. What is it to us that God 
was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob ? What has 
the imagination to do with that ? 

When you are seeking a revelation, say, " Lord God of my 
dear mother!" and see what a God will start up at the touch of 
the imagination quickened by the affections. Is there anything 
that you love very much ? Is there anybody that you revere? 
Is there some saintly person that is dear to you ? When you 
pray in good earnest, say, " God of such a one," naming 
that person. So I might pray to the God of my Litchfield 
school-days. 

"Why," people say, "what sort of preaching is this 
which teaches men to forsake the words that are in the Bible, 
and to make words of their own ?" It is because you are in 
bondage to the letter that it seems strange to you. The use 
of the imagination will give you a liberty and a power which 
you have no conception of. If you would do that which the 
apostles did in spirit, s^nose example you follow by the crust 
and the rind, a ad not by the kernel and the inside, you 
would have a breadth of experience to which you are a 
stranger now. They did certain things, and you do pre- 
cisely the same things, and think you are imitating them. 
No, you are not. You cannot more truly evade imitating 
them than by literally copying their outward acts. Such a 
following of their example may make you a parrot or a mon- 
key, but it does not make you a rational follower. Eeal 
imitation goes to the inward thing ; and when you imitate 
the apostles, you should do it by using your imagination to 
bring down, by the help of your experience, thoughts of God 
which shall magnify to your apprehension the sphere in 
which he moves. 

Then there are others who, with all the imagination that 
they can raise, can scarcely make progress. Their imagina- 
tion is small and feeble, and needs developing and strength- 
ening. 

Did you ever, before matches were invented, see a man in 
the early morning (for they used to get up betimes in those 
days) undertake to make a fire from coals poorly raked 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 369 

the night previous ? He pokes and pokes about in the heap 
of ashes, and by-and-by he discovers a spark. He seizes it 
with the tongs. It is no bigger than a pea. He blows it, 
and blows it, and blows it, and at last, by the utmost care, 
succeeds in bringing the speck to a flame, and in lighting a 
candle ; and then he is safe. 

Now, there are some men whose imagination is about like 
a fire raked up in a heap of ashes. If they would dig it out, 
and fan it, they might get a flame, and make a light, which 
would enable them to see many things which they cannot see 
now. What can they see ? A hammer, a hatchet, a saw, an 
ax, a beetle, wood, stone, — tangible, visible objects. And 
when others tell of seeing other things, they wag their heads, 
and say, iC I believe in real substantial things." As if there 
was nothing real and substantial except that which belongs 
to matter, the lowest of all conceivable things ! 

There are, happily, other doors for feeling, besides the im- 
agination. Persons who lack imagination are frequently 
quick in social sympathy, which goes far toward making up 
the deficiency. There is a kind of magnetism which glances 
from one person on to another. There is a subtle element 
here which is not half enough understood, and which is not 
half enough expressed, but which is often felt. I know that 
when I was a boy and had an ache, and the kind-hearted 
nurse said, t( Let me find the ache," and having found it, 
said, ' ' It is not so bad, Henry ; I will kiss it all away," it did 
go away, and I did not know where it was. You say it is 
impossible. I say it is not. I say that pain is of the nerve, 
and that you can act on men with your mind so that their 
whole bodily condition shall be changed. You can repel pain 
in this way. A man can be in such a state of mind that he 
can burn at the stake almost without experiencing pain. We 
have it demonstrated, in the nursery and elsewhere, that one 
mind has the power of projecting itself on other minds. 

For instance, let a great round, big-chested Methodist, 
who has the root of the matter in him, who has genuine 
religion, though he has a rough way of manifesting it — 
let him go into a crowded assembly of Methodists, and pour 
out tides of feeling, and let the people all around about him 



370 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

begin to cry, and groan, and shout, and clap their hands ; 
now if a man who is unemotional be present, he will have no 
sympathy with this, and will perhaps be disgusted by the 
exhibition. Multitudes have come to God under the excite- 
ment of such occasions, although there are multitudes who, 
if they come to God at all, come under circumstances that are 
entirely different. There are many who never come to God 
through ecstatic feeling, but who come to him through social 
feeling. They go to meetings where they are influenced by 
others, and spiritual emotions are aroused in them, and they 
cry, " Oh, I see ! Praised be God, I have the blessing !" — for 
when one has a sight of the spiritual realm which he never 
had before he thinks he has " the blessing." They go forth 
from the meeting, and those spiritual emotions pass away ; 
but when they go to the meeting again their souls are over- 
flowing with religious feelings once more ; and they say, 
" God is always here with his people." They have not power 
to awaken these feelings in themselves, so they go where 
others are, that the social element may unlock their souls, and 
bring them into a moral state. That is the philosophy of it, 
as I understand it. 

There are different modes of reaching men's interior na- 
tures. Some are to be treated according to one method, and 
some according to another. It is ignorance or neglect of the 
laws of feeling that makes so much trouble with persons in 
their religious experience. There are many who think that if 
they are to have true moral feelings they must have them in a 
particular way ; whereas true moral feelings come in an infi- 
nite number of ways. Some men say to me, " I do not like 
your church ; it is very plain, and there is nothing venerable 
in it" — and I am afraid they are right. They say, " ! 
when I go into a cathedral; the moment I step across the 
threshold I feel that everything changes" — and they are 
right. There are some folks who are so affected ; but they 
are not to say that everybody else must take that which is 
true to them ; they are to leave to us that which is true to us. 

Therefore I say that a certain number of sects is better 
than any one great body, because some will go to the rousing 
Methodist church who would not go to the Calvinistio 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 371 

church, where intellectual discussions are carried on ; and 
some will go where there is a magnificent ritual, and where 
they will he helped through the senses, through the imagina- 
tion, and through the power of association, who would not 
go elsewhere. 1 do not deny to other men their preferences 
in these matters ; and let them not deny my preferences to 
me. What I call true catholicity is a recognition of all the 
ways in which God works upon the human soul. Some men 
come to a feeling of trust, of hope, of faith and of love toward 
God through the imagination ; others come to it through rea- 
son ; others still through the social instincts ; and we should 
accept all these various methods without quarreling. 

Another hindrance to the development of moral feeling 
and to its continuous flow, in so far as continuity of moral 
feeling is practicable, is found in the law of discord or the 
force of malign feeling in changing the current and nature 
of a man's emotions. If, on a day when he feels like it, 
John Zundel is pouring out an idea on the organ, you will 
frequently see that there is a note introduced which evidently 
is not at all in the line of the thought that is being rendered, 
and which is a discordant note as it first strikes your mind ; 
but instantly there is a change ; the theme conforms itself to 
another scale; and the whole harmony flows out after that 
note, which, as compared with those which went before, was 
discordant, but which is really a hint for a new variety, a 
new direction, a new course. And this is just as true for an 
erroneous note, which is wrong, and stays wrong, and is not 
the mere entrance to a new modulation. When a hundred 
notes are right, if one shrill note that is wrong be thrown in, 
as, for instance, from the oboe, it will put to shame the en- 
tire orchestra. 

Now, in the human soul, which is the most exquisite of 
all orchestras, you may have mirth, you may have reason, 
you may have wit and humor,' you may have veneration, you 
may have hope, you may have faith, and they help each 
other, and are naturally harmonious, and cannot of them- 
selves make discord ; but when a man is in that peaceful and 
joyous state of mind which it is the nature of these combined 
elements to induce, let one single malign feeling strike in 



372 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

among them, and it will put them out of concord, and strike 
a line of discord through them. 

A man may be at church listening to a pleasing discourse, 
and may be rejoicing in high and noble thoughts, resting 
in a blessed state of mind, and, all at once, looking about, 
he may have the harmonious flow of his feelings dis- 
turbed by the sight of a man that owes him something. In- 
stantly an avaricious impulse may sweep through his soul, 
and quench the spiritual meditation in which he has been 
indulging. 

Have you ever been among the songsters on the edge of a 
forest in June, and heard the warblers singing, and the 
sparrows chirping, and the bluebird's exquisite little lady 
note ? If, during a chorus of birds' voices, a hawk in the 
air, so high as not to throw a shadow on the ground, should 
but once scream, every little voice w'oid be hushed. One 
note up there is enough to put to silence five hundred notes 
down here. So it is in the human soul. Men may have all 
manner of ecstacies ; but let there be one hawk-note struck, 
and it will put all these ecstacies and joys to flight. 

The man says, " He owes me ; and I will take a turn on 
him, I will take the twist out of him — I will do it ; it is just 
and right" — and his spirituality is all gone. You cannot 
mix benign with malign feelings. Pride, selfishness, hatred, 
anger, wrath, envying, jealousy, cannot be mixed with love, 
and kindness, and generosity, and magnanimity, and meek- 
ness, and gentleness, and humility. One class of these quali- 
ties is of the flesh, and the other is of the Spirit ; and the 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the 
flesh. They are not reconciled, neither indeed can they be. 

Then there are persons who ought to have in this dis- 
course an explanation why, when they begin a day with high 
feelings, they lose them before the day is half gone ; why, 
when on .some Sabbath day they have a blessed revelation, 
and pray God to continue it through the week, it is not con- 
tinued. 

There are other elements which I intended to speak of, 
and of which I should have spoken had I not dwelt so long 
on those that I have considered. There is the law of happi- 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 373 

ness, there is the law of association, and there are several 
other laws connected with this subject of the production and 
continuance of moral and spiritual feeling, to which I should 
have liked to call your attention ; but the time will not per- 
mit. 

Christian brethren, there are two things that I wish to 
say in closing this discourse, by way of application. First, 
on the first Sabbath of the new year, when every man ought 
to take measures, make resolutions, form purposes, ought it 
not to be a part of your plan to rise to a higher state, of moral 
emotion, and to live more in the better instincts and inspira- 
tions of your nature in the year that is to come than you have 
in the year that is gone by ? and if that is your purpose, is not 
the way in which to do it made more clear to you ? Are not 
the laws by which you can rise from an infantile or childhood 
state to the realm of spiritual things as distinct as the laws 
by which you regulate your physical or material forces ? Are 
not the laws of the soul as clearly defined as the laws of the 
body ? If a man would have moral feeling, and would under- 
stand how it is acquired, and how it may be perpetuated, 
and how it may be varied, and would be informed of those 
things which disturb or destroy it, may he not proceed on 
as distinct a basis as that on which he would proceed if he 
were going to educate himself in music, or mathematics, or 
history, or French, or any other branch of knowledge ? If a 
man can unite with the laws which regulate his secular life 
the development of the higher instincts which belong to 
humanity, is it not a thing to be desired both for his own 
sake and for the sake of those who are associated with him ? 
Is it not desirable that you should have an abiding sense of 
the reality of the invisible world, of its nearness to you, of 
God's existence and presence, of your duties to God and to 
your fellow-men, of the royalties which belong to you as a 
son of God, and of joy, peace, aspiration, faith and love ? Is 
it not becoming, at the beginning of the year, that you should 
purpose to yourself to rise to a higher state of communion 
with God, and to higher relations with men, not simply for 
one moment, for one day, or for one week, but for the whole 
year? 



374 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 

Is it not to-day in every man's power to say, " I will, this 
year, undertake to lift my whole being into a higher sphere, 
to take a step upward, to develop my nature on a higher 
plane than I have ever done before ; and if there is a spirit 
of God that will help me, if there is an inspiration that will 
guide and incite me, then by all that is sacred in religion, 
and by all that is revered in the thought of God, I will, as 
the best offering that I can bring to God, bring him my 
heart, all equipped, all eager, all ready to go forward and 
follow on to know the Lord"? 

Let us, then, on the first Sabbath of the year, with such 
hopes as these, draw near together round about the table on 
which are the symbols that represent Christ to us. Let us 
draw near with humble boldness, with a spirit of consecra- 
tion, with unfeigned love, with desire, and with hope, feel- 
ing that we can bring nothing but prayer. Pray for what 
you would have, and for what you would be. Come, and par- 
take of these dumb symbols ; and in doing so kindle in your- 
selves faith in the living realities which they represent. 
Come, all who can come in the right spirit. I ask no man to 
come because he is a member of this church ; I ask no man 
to come because he is a member of any church ; but whoever, 
in the secrecy and silence of his own conscience, knows that 
he needs divine help ; whoever can honestly draw near and 
say, ". Lord, if thou wilt help me, I will be thine " — him I 
invite to come and partake of the help of his Lord, the all- 
merciful Jesus, who gave his life a ransom for us all. If you 
are losing the Divine Spirit, this is the place and this is the 
time for you to come and implore help. Come, not from 
form, not from habit, but from an inward reality ; and then 
this memorial is yours. It belongs to every man who has 
faith in Jesus Christ. 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 375 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We reiclce, our Father, that there is no prosperity nor gladness 
that lifts us above the need of thee. We are thankful that there is 
no sorrow nor trouble that sinks us beneath thy care. Thou art ever 
present with us. And though wc cannot always rise through the 
cloud of our own feelings to discern thee, with thee is no darkness 
nor shadow. With thee the night shineth as the day, the darkness as 
the light; and we are always with thee, in thy consciousness; and 
there is no such love upon earth as thine toward us. Though we can- 
not comprehend it, nor understand how One can be so great as to care 
for all things, and yet regard each particular creature in all the vast 
assemblage even as we do each one in the smaller household of our 
own family, still thou hast been pleased to declare the minuteness of 
thy thought. The very hairs of our head are numbered. Not a 
sparrow falls to the ground without thy notice. And the whole race, 
scattered abroad throughout thy boundless domain, are before thy 
thought. .They are all within the circuit of thy love, and the pur- 
poses of thy mercy. Thou art God over all, blessed forever, and 
forever blessing. 

We draw near to thee, O Lord, this morning, with some faint con- 
sciousness of what the greatness of thy being is, but praying for more 
knowledge ; praying that the road to knowledge may be opened to us 
by the transformation of our own natures ; praying that we may be- 
come like thee in order to understand what thou art. So teach us to 
deny the flesh and all its lusts, so teach us to bring into subordination 
every passion and every appetite, so teach us to develop in ourselves 
all sweet affections, so teach us to aspire after truth and justice, so 
inspire us with holy desires, that we may rise into the spiritual realm, 
and dwell in the invisible, and thus, through our own experience, come 
nearer and nearer to some true apprehension of thy nature, and thy 
feelings and disposition's toward us. 

We beseech of thee, O Lord our God, that thou wilt grant to every 
one in thy presence, this morning, a sense of the forgiveness of sins 
If there be any who are afraid to look up into thy face, so speak 
mercy to them that they may discern a forgiving God. If there be 
any who are conscious of their own delinquency, or of their own 
helplessness to overcome easily besetting sins, and to walk in the way 
that is before them, and which they desire to walk in, O grant that 
they may have borne in upon them, this morning, that divine im- 
pulse, that inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by which they shall under- 
stand that their strength is not of themselves alone, but also of God. 

We pray that thou wilt grant to all those who are environed with 
care, who are bearing burdens, and who are tried with perplexities, 
that patience which they need, and that trust in divine providence 
which shall bring them rest and disarm them of fears. To all who sit 
under burdens and in darkness, and are to themselves prisoners, if not 



376 RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY.. 

slaves, O Lord, bring release. May they have the liberty of sous of 
God. Teach every one how poor is this life compared with that 
toward which it is working ; how small is the inheritance of the best 
of us here compared with the riches which are laid up for us in the 
heavenly state ; how little is friendship in this life, which is but twi- 
light, compared with that eternal friendship which exists beyond the 
flood. Grant that we may have brought near to us some sense of thy 
benignity; of thine all- surrounding power; of thy tender thought 
and care of us, ministering to our want on every side, within and 
without; of the wonder of th^t voyage which we are making; 
and of the blessedness of that shore toward which we are tending. 
Grant that the world above, and around, and within, may be so dis- 
closed to us this day that we shall feel our faith and our strength 
renewed. And may we realize that we are ministered to by thee. 
As the clouds pour down that which comes from the mountain, 
from every fountain and from every nil, so may we feel that we are 
moved by a spirit descending from above, that all our experiences are 
impleted of God, that he watches us, thinks of us, takes care of us, 
and that all things shall work together for good to us if we love God. 
May we be filled with a sense of thy providential government and 
personal care, this morning, that we may be able now, and here, to 
rejoice in the Lord; to be glad to express our thanksgiving in sacred 
song, and to fill the hearts of those who are darkened with light. 

Bless the affliction of those who are bereaved. Grant that those 
who have wandered out of the way, and are come again to the Shep- 
herd and Bishop of their souls, may feel his great benignity and for- 
giving love to-day. 

Grant, O Lord our God, that every one in thy presence may have 
some token of thy thought of him, and feel the power of God resting 
upon him, so that this shall not be an outward assembling alone — so 
tbat each soul present shall feel that it is divinely blessed, and so that 
we shall all go away as children feeling that we have received some 
gift. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon 
all those for whom we should pray. Remember those who are labor- 
ing from out of our midst in behalf of those who are less favored than 
themselves. May those who are torch-bearers be enlightened to see 
the path plainly while they are showing it to others. We pray that 
those who purify men, and shield them from temptation, may be 
strengthened against all evil. We beseech of thee that those who im- 
part knowledge to others may have fountains of knowledge springing 
up in them. We pray that among men there may be that patience 
and gentleness and goodness and long-suffering faith in behalf of the 
ignorant which God hath toward them. May all who are striving to 
follow in the footsteps of Christ find the revelation of a Saviour in their 
own experience, so that they may become better teachers, not only, 
but better men. Remember all those who desire to take the stores and 
accessions which have been given to them, and use them in works of 
benevolence. Grant, we pray thee, that more and more there may 
be that self-denial, that zeal in doing good, which shall bring us into 
the relationship of sons of God. 

Bless, we pray thee, all the churches of this city, and all thy 



RELIGIOUS CONSTANCY. 377 

servants who preach the gospel therein. Clothe them with the spirit 
of their Master. Grant that they may have power both to make 
known the truth and to reap abundantly the fruit of the truth 
made known. 

We pray for the churches in the great city near us. We pray for 
all those instruments by which, throughout this land, men iive seek- 
ing to stop barbarism, to turn back ignorance, and to do away with 
the vices and crimes which afflict men. Everywhere may intelligence 
prevail, together with virtue, and self-government, and justice and 
truth. 

May the light which rests upon this land be reflected hence, and 
seem beautiful to many and many a nation that sits in the region and 
shadow of death. May the light of our example rise with healing in 
its beams. 

We pray for the human race ; for their encouragement; for their 
education ; for their power in virtue. May men become more and 
more powerful, each in himself, so that it shall not be possible to 
bind them or oppress them. May Liberty, the child of true piety, 
come forth everywhere. May all the earth see thy salvation. 

And we will give the praise to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, 
evermore. Amen. 



SOUL-POWER. 



SOUL-POWER. 



" Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by 
the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed ; and that no man can say 
that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost."— 1 Cor. xii. S. 



Those who have been called to note the changes in lan- 
guage, and the associations which go with words, are familiar 
with the fact, not only that words very materially change 
their associations, hut that they often turn completely about, 
things agreeable becoming most disagreeable, and things 
odious in the beginning, by continuity and by circumstances 
which induce association, becoming very precious or desirable. 
Words are perpetually changing both ways. Often beginning 
with a mission of good they come to a mission of evil ; and 
beginning with associations of evil they frequently end in 
bringing very blessed and pleasant associations. 

For example, when the blood of Christ was spoken of to 
the Jews, it brought with it associations of the whole national 
worship — of everything that was endearing in their religious 
system. " The blood of Christ " can never mean to a modern 
what it meant to an old Jew ; and to those to whom it is not 
repulsive, it is not repulsive because there has been an arti- 
ficial and educated sense attached to it. 

Though oil was in early times spoken of as one of the 
choicest blessings, it would strike a child's mind very singu- 
larly now to hear it thus spoken of. When you cousider 
what uses oils are put to now in occidental society, the idea 

Sund at Morning, January 11, 1874. Wesson : Rom. viii. 15-39. Hymns (Plymouth 
Collection) : Kos. 299, 137 (first two stanzas). 



382 SOUL-POWER. 

of oil flowing down Aaron's beard, or being poured over his 
head, seems very strange to people in this day. There is 
nothing in modern times that corresponds to that. When, 
therefore, persons are spoken of as having oil poured over 
them, the associations are not very agreeable until an edu- 
cated, artificial, historic interpretation is given to the occur- 
rence. 

So, many of the phenomena of nature no longer seem to 
us what they seemed to those of the olden day. The voice of 
God was heard in the thunder ; and the flash of God's eye 
was seen in the lightning. These grand natural phenomena 
represented God almost in disclosed and visible presence. 
To us they represent nature. And, with the progress of sci- 
entific discovery, its analyses and its reasons, they cannot 
again ever seem to us (except in a poetic or figurative sense) 
as they seemed to men of antiquity. 

Take the word "lord." As a political term it has lost, or 
is losing, its original significance everywhere. The progress 
of democratic ideas throughout all Europe, and gradually 
even in Asia, is changing men's thoughts in respect to kingly 
power and absolutism. There are a thousand causes steadily 
working in the same direction, by which the terms "king" 
and "lord" are coming to have less and less of their old 
power in civilized countries. And in America, where we 
have had our history associated with the breaking down of 
kingly power ; where our national life was founded on rebel- 
lion, revolution, resistance ; where men went to the other ex- 
treme, the term - ' lord " is in very little repute. In a poetic 
effusion, in a romantic history, or something of that kind, it 
still has an appeal to the imagination ; but otherwise it is 
not very much esteemed. There was a time when this word 
inclosed in itself all that the mind and the heart and the im- 
agination could conceive of excellence. There were bad 
lords, bad kings, bad rulers, to be sure ; and so there are bad 
harvests, bad oranges, bad pomegranates ; but when we say 
"pomegranate," or "orange," or "grape," we always 
think of pomegranates or oranges or grapes at their best, 
and not at their worst ; and so when men spoke of "lords" 
it was the generic idea, and not the exceptional view that was 



SOUL-POWER. 383 

thought of : and thus it was one of the most royal notions 
that it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive. Men 
used to look upon their military chief as the symbol of all 
excellence — and of all excellence in power ; for whatever he 
lacked in his person was supposed to have been added to him 
by his position, by the gift of his subjects, or by the direct 
gift of God. The king represented a royalty that was lifted 
up far above all ordinary attainment or experience. 

In primitive times men came to chieftainship by virtue of 
qualities which made them the admired of all about them. 
Saul stood head and shoulders, it is said, above all his people. 
He was a grand, glorious fellow. He had great power, he 
was large of stature, he had unusual dignity, he was kingly 
in his bearing ; and so he was selected as a leader. People 
love to look up, provided they can look up to one who is wor- 
thy of their admiration. Glorious kings in every age have 
been those whose people were proud of them ; proud of their 
strength ; proud of their wisdom ; proud of their success ; 
proud of those qualities which gave them an eminent man- 
hood. 

It is in these things that the term " lord " is applied to 
Jesus ; and I wish to call your attention to the way in which 
we have minified and almost destroyed it. Aside from the 
fact that in our popular thought and imagination we do not 
put great store by the word "lord," historically it has not 
brought much to us. We have so employed it theologically 
as to make it very little more than the latch to a door — a 
mere way of opening a way. When the term "lord " is ap- 
plied to Jesus, we do not say it as the disciples did, at all. 
We speak about the "Lord Jesus Christ," or of the "Lord 
Jesus," as if these words were one name. We run them to- 
gether. 

Now, to the Jews Christ was "the Anointed." The word 
"Christ" signifies the Anointed One; and "the Anointed" 
was the hope of Israel. It was the thought around about 
which prophets and singers and holy men of old dwelt. And 
when at last it was applied to the Lord Jesus, no other term 
representing religious feeling could be found that would be 
so significant as "the Anointed of God." 



384 80UL-P0WER. 

In modern days, we never anoint people for the sake of 
imparting to them dignity, but we anoint them for rheuma- 
tism, for disease, for medical purposes. So our anointing 
men never carries with it any conception of honor ; but 
anointing in the olden time was like coronation, like crown- 
ing, like robing. He who was anointed priest or king with 
the anointing oil was greatly honored. And Jesus was called 
"the Anointed." Jesus was his family name; but Christ, 
"the Anointed," was his honorary title. And what fra- 
grance, what power on the imagination, there was in that 
term ! And what vibrations of unanalyzahle feeling it gave ! 
So that when they called him *■ Lord Jesus" they recognized 
his anointing, they put upon him the crown of empire. They 
needed no other argument for divinity than that. 

He who sits upon the throne, and puts upon his head the 
crown, and takes the sceptre, has usurped kingship, if it does 
not belong to him ; but when they applied to Jesus this term 
"Lord," they crowned him; they lifted him to the very 
highest reach that it is possible for human thought to attain. 
And you will find that, ever after, the use of the term to 
the early Christian was peculiarly significant. It was not to 
them the slippery, glib thing which we have made it — the 
mere knocker to a door ; a mere handle ; a mere whirligig. 
To them the word Lord was full of reverence, and heart- 
shakings, and gladness, and gratitude. It was a wonder- 
working word, when it was applied to Jesus. 

Therefore you see the significance of this passage which I 
have selected : 

"I give you to understand that no man, speaking by the spirit of 
God, calleth Jesus anathema; and that no man can say that Jesus is 
Lord hut by the Holy Ghost." 

Assuming that he does it with that full feeling which 1 
have been describing — with the enthusiasm, the amplitude, 
the associations, the values, that belong to that name, no man 
can apply this term to Jesus, unless he has the inspiration of 
the Holy Ghost upon him. 

It is to the effect upon the soul, upon the character, upon 
the conduct of life, of allegiance and affection toward a great 
nature, that I shall now call your attention. 



SOUL-POWER. 385 

Personal influence is a primal law of nature. God has set 
each person in the household to be educated — that is, devel- 
oped and carried up, step by step, through the most critical 
period of his life — by the influence upon him of father and 
mother, and of brothers and sisters. It is personal influence 
that goes to make the family. The child is greeted with that 
influence. He is not greeted with abstract ideas ; he is not 
greeted with rules and regulations, explained to him ; he is not 
greeted with any systematic arrangements : he is greeted with 
father and mother, and brother and sister. Everything he 
does in the earlier stages of his living is educed from him by 
the direct inspiration of personal influence. 

And when he goes out of the family into the school, the 
same thing, though weakened and imperfect, is carried for- 
ward, and should be carried forward, and will be carried for' 
ward, in all the relations of after life, until the society in 
which he moves becomes perfect. 

After men enter upon public life, or business life, it is, as a 
matter of fact, true that they are more influenced by things 
than by persons ; but it is their misfortune — not their neces- 
sity. It is contrary to the genius of true education, and not 
in the line of it. Some men are more influenced by sensuous 
things than by things moral or social. They are more con- 
cerned about what they shall eat, what they shall drink, and 
what they shall put on, than about the welfare of their 
souls. To men who love pleasure, and seek after things 
which afford transient enjoyment, and strive to gain the 
caress of the hours and bowers of delight, these things are far 
more influential than any single person, or any number of 
persons. 

There are men who are influenced by money ; there are 
men, too, who are influenced by politics ; there are men 
who are living on a comparatively low plane in their own 
nature ; and things, as a matter of fact, are the objects which 
are most influential upon them. 

But none of these elements act upon the whole nature of 
a man. If one is drawn toward pleasure, only a part of his 
nature is developed. If one is drawn toward social life solely, 
only a part of his nature is stimulated. If one is drawn 



386 /soul-power. 

wholly toward public affairs, only a part of his nature is 
awakened. If one is confined to business, to facts, to com- 
binations, to enterprises, tilings only can take hold of him, 
and tilings are never able to rouse up the whole of a man. 
Nothing in society or in the world that is external has power 
over the whole man — over his intellect ; over his imagina- 
tion ; over his force-giving passions ; oyer all his faculties ; 
and all of them at once. It is not given to things to have 
complete power over men — it is given only to souls. It is the 
living man that has power to dominate and electrify living 
men. Nothing else has this power — neither the sun, nor the 
stars, nor the seasons, nor the grandest mountain scenery, 
nor all beauty, nor all combination of force. These stop in 
the outer court of the soul — in the precincts of the natural 
man. Nothing has power to enthuse a man, and open up 
his life, without and within and altogether, except the in- 
spiration of another living, throbbing, enthusiastic nature. 
It is given to living beings to exert the highest influence, 
and make it powerful ; and it is given to nothing but living 
beings to do it 

Let us observe some of the examples which may be cited 
in corroboration of this. 

The influence of a chief on his clan is such that men not 
only follow him, but follow him with an enthusiasm that 
swallows up everything else. The followers of a chief in old 
Scottish days would sacrifice house, home, family, life itself, 
at the heels of that chief. They were enthusiastic. They 
counted nothing dear to them in following him. The heroic 
element in these half -brutal natures was strong. Some of the 
noblest instances of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and suffering, 
that ever were known, are recorded of rude, red-handed 
men, in following their chief. It was not that they were 
going to get glory or wealth, but they had the inspiration of 
their chief, and admiration for him. For him they would do 
a thousand times more than they would for themselves. 
Many men will do things high and noble for another that 
you never could inspire them to do for themselves. 

Hero-worship has been so universal throughout the world 
as to show that there is an element in human nature that 



SOUL-POWER. 387 

longs to expend itself on something which is above it, which 
it may admire, and from which it may receive potential in- 
fluence. Not only is it so in respect to heroes that are living, 
high, or low, or intermediate : it is so in respect to old ones, 
embalmed ones, historical ones. 

Some nations have been almost transformed, from this 
cause. It is one of the mischiefs of French life that the 
people of France are not natural, but artificial, formed on 
models of the Greeks and Romans. For them to form them- 
selves on models of the Greeks and Romans is as if a man 
should put baby bells, no bigger than thimbles, into a cathe- 
dral steeple, and try to make a chime of them, instead of 
putting there ten or twelve-thousand-pound bells. They are 
trying to put on the Greek and the Roman manner, which 
have hardly any sympathy with their real character ; that 
leads them to desire to have heroes, to worship them and to 
follow them. 

The power of personal influence is seen where a great na- 
ture is master in a school— the nature of one like him of 
Rugby, who died and left no successor. Arnold inspired 
multitudes of men. The great men in the churches to-day 
were many of them his pupils. The enthusiasm of men for 
him, especially when he died, almost knew no bounds. For, 
as a dandelion is a great deal more beautiful when its blos- 
som perishes, and nothing but its seed-globe remains, so men 
seem to need to have their external nature purged away from 
them in order that they may rise to their full power. And 
though Arnold had an immense power over his pupils while 
he was living, yet after he was dead his influence impelled 
them with an enthusiasm which hardly any military man 
ever gave to his followers. 

It is something so in art and literature. We shall find 
persons following after men in these departments who seem 
to them to embody their ideal of perfection. 

Especially we see it in military heroes. This I need 
scarcely more than mention. A great warrior, who is at the 
same time a great man, almost carries everybody captive. 
And I do not wonder. I feel the enthusiasm myself ; and t 
know how everybody else feels who is touched by it. I ad- 



388 SOUL-POWER. 

mire a heroic general ; but a general should be a great man 
in order to call forth the highest admiration. If you could 
only have taken Washington's moral nature and put it inside 
of Napoleon, without disturbing that chieftain's military and 
statesmanlike nature ; if besides Napoleon's great military 
power you could have given him a moral force, how admirable 
he would have been ! I think I would give my life a hundred 
times a day for such a man. The fire and enthusiasm of one's 
nature is kindled under the influence of a great soul that brings 
near, in a visible form, noble traits that hover before us in 
dreams, and that fill the air with specters. 

Take a man who fills up the proportions of manhood ; set 
him in operation, point the age to his achievements, make the 
nation feel that he is their representative,' and give every one 
a sense of personal aggrandizement in that he is represented 
by such-a grand nature, — and what a stimulus it gives ! What 
a power it exerts over men ! 

There is nothing that touches the understanding like a 
thoughtful understanding ; there is nothing that touches the 
imagination like an active imagination ; there is nothing that 
touches feeling like feeling itself ; there is nothing that 
touches moral sensibility like greatness of moral nature in a 
living form. These things are normal. They are the things 
which God meant should exercise power over mankind. Liv- 
ing beings are the educators of living beings. 

Evidently, then, there is a prodigious power in the nature 
of personal influence, if it is only understood and used. We 
have this power without analysis, without philosophical in- 
quisition, and without any considerable degree of arrange- 
ment. We have not organized it yet, except to a limited 
extent. The Eoman church has done more in the organiza- 
tion of personal power into institutional forms than any other 
church on earth. 

Now, personal power of the highest kind tends to utilize 
the objects of it, and to harmonize them with themselves. If 
you take a serf — an old-fashioned Scottish servitor — and 
leave him to himself, he degenerates, and becomes vulgar- 
ized, and gets to be little better than a cast-off swineherd ; 
but let him be called in the moment of excitement and en- 



SOUL-POWER. 389 

thusiasm to stand by his chief, and see how his nature lifts 
itself up. See how much more there is of him. See how 
the bad part of his nature goes down, and how the good part 
of his nature, being inspired, comes up. He is harmonized 
by the enthusiasm which is given him by his chief. A great 
nature tends powerfully to stimulate, and to develop in an 
extraordinary degree, those who are underneath it. 

I do not say that everybody has been fortunate in having 
a nature adapted to receive influence which tended to stimu- 
late it ; but I do say that there are many thousand persons 
who have been thus fortunate. There are hundreds in my 
presence who, as they listen to this discourse, are saying to 
themselves, "I trace back the best things in my life to that 
person, who influenced me." 

In reading the life of G-oethe, written by himself, you will 
notice how he marks the various stages of his self-culture, 
and says, * ' At this point I met such a man, and he was of 
great use to me in such and such respects." No one man 
seems to have sufficed for the regulation of his life ; for suc- 
cessive persons with great natures appear, at different points, 
to have risen up and exerted their influence upon him ; and 
the sum of all the effects which they produced on him was 
prodigious. His educators were living men, active and pow- 
erful, around about him. 

I can look back upon my own early life, and see how one 
and another took me, and how one prepared me for another. 
I can see how the largest natures did not always get access to 
me. It was late in life before my father influenced me very 
much. I think it was a humble woman who was in our family 
that first gained any considerable control over me. I feel the 
effect of her influence to this day. 

I next came under the influence of a very humble serving- 
man. He opened up new directions to me, and gave me new 
impulses. He was a colored man ; and I am not ashamed to 
say that my whole life, my whole career respecting the colored 
race, in the conflict which was so long carried on in this 
country, was largely influenced by the effect produced on my 
mind when I was between eight and ten years of age, by a 
poor old colored man, who worked on my father's farm, 



390 SOUL-POWER. 

named Charles Smith. He did not set out to influence me ; 
he did not know that he did it ; I did not know it until a 
great while afterwards ; but he gave me impulses, and im- 
pulses which were in the right direction ; for he was a godly 
and hymn-singing man, who made wine fresh every night 
from the cluster. He used to lie upon his humble bed (I 
slept in the same room with him) and read his Testament, 
unconscious, apparently, that I was in the room ; and he 
would laugh and talk about what he read, and chuckle over 
it with that peculiarly unctuous throat-tone which belongs to 
his race. I never had heard the Bible really read before ; but 
there, in my presence, he read it, and talked about it to 
himself and to God. He turned the New Testament into 
living forms right before me. It was a revelation and an im- 
pulse to me. 

I remember some teachers who gave me impulses that I 
never shall get over as long as I live. Some of them are 
dead — one in especial, whose success in life was never great, 
and whose issue out of life was sad. I could make a pilgrim- 
age to his grave, and bow down, and give God thanks for 
that which he was to me, and for that which he did for me. 
You see single instances in which persons have power given 
them to wake up the whole nature of those who come under 
their influence. 

I am interested in the history of John Stuart Mill. I am 
sorry that he was not better than he was. That is the way I 
feel about all of you. People are criticizing him, finding 
fault with him, shaving him down ; and doubtless he was im- 
perfect, as we all are. Nobody ever thought he was an angel ; 
he never thought himself to be one ; but laying aside all inci- 
dental questions, he had admirable traits ; and he came to a 
point in his life where he was married to a woman who so 
absolutely controlled him that from that time to the end of 
his life he could say, " I am what I am by the grace of my 
wife." When she died, and was buried in Prance, he built 
her sepulcher there, and there he had his dwelliug. He went 
back to England and attended to his duties during the win- 
ter, but when summer came he returned and lived by his 
wife's grave. 



SOUL-POWER. 391 

Next to the thought of being so great as to be God, the 
grand feeling in the world is to have a God, and to feel that 
with the highest impulses and the noblest conceptions you 
give up everything that is in you to another. This laying 
down of one's being in the presence of another, and saying, 
in the words of the great song in Revelation, (i Thou art 
worthy to receive glory, and honor, and power, and domin- 
ion," is the noblest and the grandest reach of which human 
beings are susceptible. 

There is, then, this element — the power of feeling, the 
power of enthusiasm, the power of being absolutely subdued by 
another soul — which, when it enters into a man, casts light 
about, assumes control, harmonizes his nature, brings the top 
to the top, and keeps the bottom at the bottom, and the mid- 
dle in the middle, so that one has possession of himself when 
he is perfectly possessed by another who is large enough and 
good enough to exert that plenary influence which God per- 
mits souls to exert upon each other. 

And this is the key-note to the idea that Jesus is Lord. 
There is One so large, so various, so magnetic, so inspira- 
tional, as to exceed all that the human mind ever imagined. 
There is One who gathers in himself all that the most beauti- 
ful thought ever conceived. There is One who opens up 
moral quality with a power, and a beauty, and an effluence, 
and • an affluence transcending everything that man ever 
dreamed of. There is One who centers in himself such sig- 
nal sweetness, such wonderful gentleness, such omnipotence 
of personal power, that each one of us has a right to say, 
"He is Lord to me." 

So, then, we have come to a point in which, if it be not 
in father, nor in mother, nor in sister, nor in brother, nor in 
companion, nor in friend, nor in hero, there is for every man 
who lives, one Being that has in himself supreme excellence 
of every kind — such a Being as, when looked upon, kindles 
enthusiasm and zeal and self-devotion and self-consecration, 
and gives to the human soul the full of that divinest and 
most potent of all powers, the power of a living soul acting 
on an inward consciousness. 

There is an idea in the ISTew Testament which men have 



392 80UL-P0WEB. 

run oyer but have not discovered. As skaters glide over run- 
ning water on the ice, not knowing what is under the ice ; so 
men skate across the river of the water of Life, which theology 
has frozen over, and do not know what is below them. It is 
the Lord Jesus Christ ; and he is God ; and he rose up before 
those holy men of old, who were influenced by him, and who 
wrote concerning him, as a living presence full of every con- 
ceivable excellence ; and he so poured his Spirit upon them 
that they were enthused and lifted themselves up with aban- 
donment of love and with luxuriance of devotion. They re- 
ceived the divine blessing in overmeasure ; and it came through 
the power of this living Saviour. He made the old Christians 
what they were. Men go mousing about, here and there, to 
ascertain what the secret of their power was ; but they do not 
look in the right direction. There was a Person who in- 
fluenced them ; and that Person was Jesus ; and that Jesus 
was Lord ; and that Lord was a living presence to them ; and 
his presence was worthy to rule consciousness, and conscience, 
and sensibilities. When, therefore, it is written that i ' no 
man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy G-host " 
you understand what is meant — his Spirit inspires them with 
allegiance. 

This explains, then, the problem of all problems, the ques- 
tion of a network of questions, in the New Testament — that 
which relates to the emission of the earlier Christians from 
Judaism, or the Jewish system. They had been endeavoring 
to build up a moral life by maxims, and precepts, and rituals, 
and institutional arrangements. These things were very well 
in their day, and for a specific purpose, and to a limited ex- 
tent ; but Christ the Anointed was the " end of the law," as 
it is said. All that was sought by symbolism and ritualism was 
accomplished. When a living Being was brought into the con- 
sciousness of mankind, ritualism went out of view. But men 
have brought it back ; men are trying to bring it back ; and 
they are welcome to it ! I do not object to the bringing a 
cradle out of the garret where it has been for scores of years, 
provided there are grandchildren to be rocked ; but for the 
old man himself to try to get into it is absurd. If there are 
babes that need rocking and tending in the old cradles and 



SOUL-POWER. 393 

cribs of the past, there is no objection to their being used 
again ; but for full-grown men of our day to attempt to get 
into these ancient cribs and cradles is preposterous. 

Ah ! it is the love of power, it is the hierarchic element, 
that is cropping out . Men do love power. They love organ- 
ization, because they manage organizations. They love doc- 
trines and institutions, because by the interpretations of 
doctrines and by the control of institutions they hold men in 
thrall. They do not hold them for evil, perhaps, but, never- 
theless, they hold them. The Pojoe of Eome is not the only 
pope ; for I think that while cardinals get together and elect 
a pope, every mother who brings a boy into life elects a pope. 
The desire to rule is natural. Every man wants to be first. 
Every man wants to govern. Every man wants to feel that 
he has power over others. Men organize to carry on pope- 
dom. It inheres, first, in human nature, and afterwards, it 
finds its way into schools, and colleges, and churches, and elee- 
mosynary institutions of every kind. 

Now, there is but one power that is worthy to rule, it is 
not in magistrate — unless he represents something besides his 
own interest, and is lost in that which he represents ; it is 
not in judge; it is not in earthly being; it is not in synod ; 
it is not in presbytery; it is not in church : it is in nothing 
less than the Lord Jesus. He is a living power that is worthy 
to rule over the hearts of men, and to inspire them. These 
other things, as steps toward things higher, as adjuncts or 
adjuvants, are here and there -permissible, but the only char- 
acteristic, central and critical element of the Christian scheme 
is this : that it takes each individual man, and tears off the 
priestly vestments from him, and removes from him institu- 
tional elements, and takes the living, throbbing heart, which 
needs development, inspiration, growth, hope, and brings it 
right into the presence of a living Heart that is larger and 
better and transcendently nobler, and lets that Heart ripen the 
fruit of this. That is Christianity — the bringing of the in- 
ward man right into communion with the everlasting God. 

You will see what was meant in the olden time by " be- 
lieving in the Lord." People say, " Eepent, and believe in 
the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. " In our time 



394 SOUL-POWER. 

men stumble over that. They try to believe, and, not seeing 
their way clear, say, " What shall I believe ? How shall 
I believe?" "Faith that works by love" is another ex- 
pression that is used. The believing is exactly this-: such 
a view of Christ, such a conception of the relationship be- 
tween Jesus and you, as makes him a living power on your 
soul through love, through trust; through confidence. There 
is not one of you who does not know what it is to believe, in 
that sense. 

In the great march through the South to Savannah, under 
Sherman, would it have been necessary to interpret to the 
poorest bummer in the army what it was to believe in Sher- 
man ? "Eh !" said the men under him, "he knows how to 
think. Ah ! he knows how to plan. Ha ! don't he under- 
stand ? Ho ! I would go through fire and water for him." 
The old black man said, " Aha ! Massa Sherman — Pse gwine 
whar you go." Sherman w r as a living presence ; and it was 
his personal power on his men that inspired them. 

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is not any mythical state : 
it is the enthusiasm of a follower who reveres his leader. It 
is the rapture of one who looks up confidingly toward a be- 
loved master. It is the personal effluence of a soul toward 
Christ under the consciousness of its relationship to 
him. 

When you lift the Lord Jesus Christ up before men, re- 
member that, with a certain constancy, he is as various as 
are the heavens. We in the temperate zone know that dur- 
ing winter and summer the same skies are over our heads ; 
but did you ever notice how the seasons vary ? No two 
springs ever walked the earth with the same sandals. No 
two weeks were ever precisely the same. No day is the exact 
copy of any other day. The sun, I suppose, never rises as it 
has risen before. I suppose the sun never sets twice alike. 
That Artist of artists, who reaches forth his hands, profuse 
with color, and makes pictures hemispheric, continental, 
never repeats himself. He paints figures of majesty and 
glory on the sky. He piles clouds in grandeur, like moun- 
tain ranges, upon the horizon. He wipes out the wrinkles of 
his cloud-painting, and lets the sun go down unobscured. 



SOUL-POWER. 395 

The scene is always changing. It is never jusfc what it lias 
been. And we foreyer exclaim, " It is beautiful !" 

Now, the Sun of Righteousness, Jesus, the Lord, is never one 
fixed thing. There are some men whose God is like the moon 
as we sometimes see it painted on clocks, with a round, fixed 
face, behind which the machinery ticks, ticks, ticks, without 
cessation, and which always looks alike. Idolators are they. 
For the true God is from everlasting to everlasting the inspira- 
tional God, whose thoughts move all thoughts, and of whom 
we are but dying sparks. Every heart here has some slight 
touch of the divine Heart, and is but an emanation of God's 
soul. What is he but the sum of all things conceivable, in 
gentleness, in sweetness, in justice, in purity, in truth, in 
righteousness, in courage, in self-denial, in winningness, in 
heavenliness, in caress, in wisdom of philosophy, in beauty of 
poetry, in majesty of eloquence, and in magnitude of govern- 
ment ? Whatever exercises the imagination worthily is pos- 
sible to our conception because it is in God. And can you 
keep the image all the tim§ ? It never should be the same, 
nor twice alike. It is forever changing, as the sky is forever 
changing — sometimes darkened with storms ; sometimes cov- 
ered with light, fleecy, floating, island-clouds ; sometimes 
clear and tranquil ; always varying ; and yet always sub- 
stantially the same. Our God changes not, in this : that he 
is holy, that he is blessed in love, that he is powerful in gov- 
ernment, that he is drawing all creation toward him, even as 
planets draw the tides of the sea toward them ; and yet, after 
all, when you look at him, so much is there of him, so little 
can you take in of him at once, that his attributes seem fugi- 
tive, and he does not seem to you twice alike. So great is he 
that there are no bounds to his greatness ; so blessed is he 
that there are no terms that are adequate to describe him ; 
so unfailing is he that every heart says, " Thine, God, am 
I, and thou art mine." 

Contrast, now, this way of living with the ordinary way. 
Suppose one should come to such a personal sense of the liv- 
ing God as I have been speaking of ? Suppose you could 
realize that God's intense feeling toward you is one of yearn- 
ing, one of fondness, one of love ? What would be the effect 



396 SOUL-POWER. 

upon a man's life and disposition to have such access to God, 
and to have such a blazing of divine heat right upon the soul ? 
When you come to go back and consider the analogies and in- 
stances which I gave you of the power of the teacher, of the 
master of art, of the king, of the general ; and when you 
realize Christ, and make him personal to you, and open your 
soul to him, the effect is tremendous on your understanding 
and will. It harmonizes them, and tends to keep the best 
part of your nature uppermost, and to give it power. And it 
is all that you need to make you symmetrical. 

I wish to contrast this, for a moment, with the result of 
the efforts of men to control their lives by surrounding them- 
selves with institutions and observances. You may surround 
yourself with these things ; you may divide the, days, and 
say, I will sleep eight hours, and keep awake all the rest of 
the time ; you may ordain that your working-hours shall be 
occupied so and so ; you may determine that the body shall 
stand silent eight hours for repairs, and that during the re- 
maining sixteen hours it shall nfove in a prescribed course ; 
but when you have done that what will you be but a machine? 
The machine would strike, the wheels would go round, and 
your life would be worked in an artificial way. I could make 
a better machine with my knife than you would be under such 
circumstances. There is enough of the human element in you 
to spoil you for a machine. An iron machine is better than 
a flesh one. 

When one is converted, he should be converted to man- 
hood in Christ Jesus — that is, to versatility ; to variety ; to 
power — automatic power, will-power ; and to liberty — liberty 
to think, liberty to feel, liberty to flash this way or that way, 
liberty to be, in his sphere, and according to the measure of 
his strength, what God himself is in his universal sphere, and 
according to his omnipotent strength. 

That is the Christian idea. You are sons of God, his 
children, his heirs ; and you inherit his nature as well as the 
pleasures of his kingdom. So that all attempts to break up a 
man's life by institutions, by rituals, by days, by observances, 
are generally unnecessary and useless. They may, in a remote 
way, and as mere suggestions, on the principle of association, 



SOUL-POWER. 397 

help you ; and if they do help you you are at liberty to em- 
ploy them ; but to undertake to say that they constitute 
Christianity is to substitute for the royalty of a living Saviour 
a simple methodical machine. It is to put things artificial 
and auxiliary in the place of things that are chief and divine. 

If, therefore, men say, in regard to teaching, organization, 
church-forms, and the like, " We take these things because 
we think we can help ourselves with them," I have not a word 
to say by way of objection, though I may criticise their judg- 
ment ; but when they undertake to tell me that these are re- 
ligion, and the only ways of religion, I say to everyone of 
them, " You are worshiping the sepulcher, and that three 
days after Christ has risen. " It is an empty grave, and not a 
living Saviour. 

Consider how men are trying to get a hope, as it is called. 
Among the means which they employ are revivals. I believe 
in revivals. They are normal ; they are philosophical ; they 
are a part of the divine scheme. In revivals men are often 
converted soundly, and sent on their way rejoicing. But 
many suppose that. revivals are like china-making furnaces, 
and that in them men are transformed. That which goes 
into the furnace is clay ; and when it comes out it is in the 
form of vases all ready for the market. So men are supposed 
to sit under a certain amount of preaching, and have a cer- 
tain amount of feeling produced in them, and go through a 
certain amount of crying and wishing and resolving, and then 
receive "the blessing," as it is called, and go forth singing 
and happy. Men have the impression that after they have 
undergone a * certain change, and come out in a certain ex- 
perimental way, they are safe. They think that then they 
have their policy, that it is a good life-policy, and that they 
are insured. I need not tell you the difference between liv- 
ing with a loyal allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and re- 
lying upon a vague hope based on a thousand fantasies. 

Inhere are those who attempt to say that this is what may 
be called the Neiu England scheme of a new life. Well, it 
depends upon what period of theology you strike in at. If 
you strike in during the days of Hopkins and Edwards it is 
one thing ; but if you strike in during the days of Taylor it 



398 80UL-P0WER. 

is another thing. On the whole, it is, as last unfolded, Jie 
generic purpose of the soul to live for God. So, when men 
are aroused to a sense of their condition they are urged to 
choose. The command is, " Choose, this day, whom ye will 
serve;" and men are scrutinized. It is said to them, "Has 
the great act of choice taken place ? Is it a generic choice ? 
Does it control every part of your life, and every part of your 
being ? If it does, you have begun a Christian life." Then 
they say, "I choose ; I have made a choice ; and I am from 
this time forth on the Lord's side. Now what must I do ?" 
" Well, take up your cross, and follow every step of your duty 
as fast as it is unfolded to you." That is all. But do you 
not see how absolutely they have lost out the central element 
of a true Christian conception ? The real controlling choice 
is only this — such a sense of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of 
his living presence, and such an enthusiasm of consecration, 
that in the future he becomes nearer and dearer to the heart, 
and more influential than anything else. 

This is the peculiar idea of Christianity. How it takes 
the place of that dry notion ! In one case persons are follow- 
ing an abstraction that intellectual men, men of a vital will, 
can conceive of ; but the trouble with half of mankind is that 
they have not will-stamina ; and when weak folks try to form 
generic resolutions, those resolutions are like pictures on a 
March window, which are beautiful before a fire is made, but 
which melt off as soon as they are subjected to the influence 
of the heat, for their beauty is only condensed frost, frozen 
beauty. 

To thousands of men it is said, "Now "resolve to be 
Christ's ; resolve to live right. " They do resolve, yes ; but 
there comes a second resolve that knocks the head off from 
the first ; there is a third that knocks the head off from the 
second ; and so on. Eipple follows ripple, and wave follows 
wave ; and there is ceaseless change ; and men are bewildered, 
and well-nigh discouraged. They hope that they will per- 
haps go to heaven. They say, " I have done the best I could, 
and God must take care of the rest." And there is some 
sense in that. If there were not I do not know what would 
become of the church. 



SOUL-POWER. 399 

Ah ! do you suppose that the kingdom of Christ is woven 

with meshes as small as the meshes of theology ? 

" As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher 
than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts, saith the 
Lord." 

He scorns, he derides, system-makers. There is not in 
their systems one first conception of the grace that inheres in 
him. These theological notions are all obscurations, where 
they are put in the place of the New Testament idea. There 
is one God, one Lord, by whom you are called, whom you are 
to serve, and who is everything to you. Jesus is his name. 
By the waking up, through the Holy Ghost, of the higher 
spiritual consciousness in your nature, you will see blooming 
in him all excellence, all power, all glory. Worthy of being 
honored, imitated, loved and worshiped, is this Lord Jesus. 
Accept him and follow him, and then the living power of an 
ever-present God will subordinate your lower nature to your 
higher, will harmonize your feelings, will keep you right ; and 
the ten thousand minute particulars of daily life will take 
care of themselves as they arise, one by one. 

Men are trying to be humble to-day, benevolent to-mor- 
row, forgiving the next day ; they are endeavoring to build up 
their life by little patch-works. Make all things grow in you, 
and everything will take care of itself. As when from the 
South summer sun comes and brings May and June, the 
power of light and heat making a green-house no longer 
necessary, the sun being gardener, and all things springing 
up under its influence ; so when the Sun of Eighteousness, 
with healing in his beams, shines upon men who have been 
priest-led and priest-educated, or who have had no religious 
teaching or training, under the grandeur and sweetness of the 
excellence and power of the Lord Jesus Christ these men are 
of themselves humble, of themselves loving, of themselves 
self-denying. The influence of the living presence* of the 
Saviour on your soul corrects everything in you, and makes 
it regular. 

Christ, then, is the Beginning and the End ; the First 
and the Last ; the All in all ; the Consummation ; the Con- 
summate ; the everlasting Keward. 

Dear brethren, let Christ be more to you. Dear friend, 



400 JSOUL-POWER. 

wandering wide, with vague thoughts of excellence, behold 
the Lamb of God — the One who, of all beings in the universe, 
is "the brightness of God's glory"; "the express image of 
his person"; "upholding all things by the word of his 
power." 

I preach Jesus to you. I preach his living presence to 
those who want a Leader. I preach his love and sympathy 
to those who have not the love and sympathy of man. I 
preach him as the One, above all, who stoops to every crea- 
ture on the globe. I preach him as the only One who is pure 
and holy, and who comes to all that are sick, and that pray 
for help, saying, "I will answer and I will heal." To you 
who are bound, I say, Let his hand untie the cord. To you 
who are strangers in the Commonwealth of Israel, I say, Let 
him bring you home. Come to the Shepherd and Bishop of 
your souls. Take Christ, and then you will have taken all. 



SOUL-POWER. 401 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* 

We thank thee for these rays of light, our Father. Though we can- 
not understand thy gifts as we would, and though there is much of 
wonder around about the beginning of life, yet we discern much of 
wisdom in them ; and we see in the gifts which thou art making to 
us of these little ones, much of instruction for our own nature. In 
thy way thou hast opened inspiration in the household, which per- 
petually interprets all forms of life, the word of the Lord, and thy 
dealings with men. Thou hast, by the kingdom of love below, how- 
ever circumscribed and imperfect it maybe, given us a light by which 
to discern the glory of that greater kingdom of love which is flaming 
beyond the bounds of sense, and is waiting for our interpretation, 
when we shall have cast off the things of this world, so that we ean 
discern, with unclouded eyes, the things of the spirit land. 

We thank thee, O Lord, for the blessing which thou hast granted 
to these dear parents, who have this morning drawn near in the midst 
of their brethren. May all our hearts surround them with sympathy, 
and warm them, as they come among us with their children, in the 
hope that by their fidelity, by our cooperation and help, and by all 
the blessings of the sanctuary ministered by thy holy Spirit, these 
children may grow up to Christian manhood ; that they may not live 
for low and sensuous enjoyment ; that they may not live for worldly 
pomp ; that they may not live for things that perish ; that they may 
live in this world as not abusing it, for that other world to which 
they are destined. May the unfolding sense of these children be filled 
with the truth of Jesus — for in him is all wisdom. 

We pray that thou wilt grant that the life and the health of these 
little ones may be precious in thy sight ; and yet, if thou takest them 
away from thy servants, grant that their going may be a ministry 
of sorrow that shall be precious to them, even as their coming has 
been a ministry of love most precious. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt teach these parents to be patient 
in yielding their time, their thought, their affection, for these little 
ones; and so may they find that everyday, in their household life, 
they are growing larger inwardly; that the kingdom of heaven 
being developed is within them; and that it is growing more and 
more in power over the outward kingdom of the flesh. 

Grant, O Lord, to those who are taking hold of early manhood, 
that they may grow up with faith in virtue, faith in truth, faith in 
honor, and that the slippery ways of the world may not lead them 
away from a firm confidence in the power and happiness of real in- 
tegrity. Vouchsafe to those who are beginning their life-work, 
higher aims, nobler ideas of duty, and thoughts of a better and purer 
manhood. May they not be content to live only as they live who are 
dragged down toward the earth and toward the flesh. May they seek 
to live by their enlightened reason ; by their sanctified affections ; by 
all that nobility of the soul by which it calls itself a child of God. 

Bless, we pray thee, this morning, all those who have gathered to- 

* Immediately following the baptism of children. 



402 SOUL-POWER. 

gether here this morning, a great company, with various wants. O 
Lord, it is easy for thee to see into every heart, and to know every 
thought. Yea, the unexpressed wishes of the heart are plain to thee. 
The very throbs of the heart are audible to thee. And we beseech of 
thee that thou wilt grant to every one in thy presence the things 
which thou seest that he needs. Art not thou striving in men by thy 
Spirit? and are not those sighs and yearnings which are unutterable 
inspired by thee ? Grant, then, that whatever they ask through thine 
inspiration may be given to them — patience, faith, hope, that shines 
in the darkest night, and never goes out. Grant that they may have 
allegiance and fidelity to Christ, and that they may take hold, from 
time to time, upon his life. Grant that they may behold, in thy 
providence, in human events, in all the evolving processes of human 
life around about them, tokens of the divine presence and arrange- 
ment and power. We beseech of thee that thou wilt deliver them 
from doubt, from unbelief, and from the temptations which some- 
times assail them mightily, and roll night in upon their soul. Deliver 
them, we pray thee, in the hours of weakness. Thou that didst bow 
down in anguish, thou to whom came angels, strengthening thee, how 
much weaker we are, in the hour of trouble, when we feel unable to 
stand, than thou wast! Grant, we beseech of thee, that we may fall 
no further down than upon our knees, that to us may come angels of 
mercy and succor. And if thera be those that are dead, O thou that 
didst lift up the hand of power upon death, thou that didst ransom 
even from the sepulcher, look upon those who seem spent and gone, 
and say of them, "They are not dead — they sleep ;" and arouse them 
from their sleep, from their stupor of sin, and from evil living of 
every kind whatever. May there be a resurrection of the souls 
of men to-day. May there be, at the beginning of this year, such a 
wonderful working of the Spirit upon the hearts and consciences of 
men that multitudes shall begin to draw aside the veil that has hidden 
their true faces. Grant that they may begin to shine out with the 
lustre and lineaments of the Lord Jesus Christ. May the power of 
divine love ransom many, and give them power, and send them forth 
to their work, and prepare them for it. 

We beseech of thee, O God, that thou wilt bless not only this con- 
gregation, but all the congregations that are gathered together in this 
city, in the great city near us, and in all our land. May the light arise 
upon Zion. May all contentions cease. May all hearts be joined to- 
gether in the common love of the common King. May his name 
become triumphantly glorious throughout this nation. May his 
power be felt everywhere. May all our laws and all our institutions 
feel the presence of God. 

Be pleased to remember those who are in authority — the President 
of these United States, and all who are joined with him. Remember 
the Congress assembled, the Legislatures of our several States, the 
Governors, all judges, magistrates of every kind. We beseech of 
thee that they may administer their trusts in the fear of God, and 
with a true heart. 

May the people be patient, and may they live not alone for out- 
ward prosperity, but for justice, for truth, for virtue. May humanity 
prevail among us. At last may there be nations that have pity; 



SOUL-POWER. 403 

nations that love peace ; nations that seek, not their own aggrandize- 
ment, but the welfare of the whole human family. 

Grant that the world may begin to move in sympathy with thee, 
who hast declared that the field is the world. So may mankind 
begin to feel for mankind. Grant that the days of darkness aud 
hindrance may be cut short, and that those civilizing influences 
may be hastened which breathe forth from the bosom of God, by 
which every man shall live and grow to the full stature of perfect 
manhood, and by which all nations shall stand together compact in 
righteousness, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the king- 
doms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, sball be praises 
everlasting. Amen. 



-♦-+ 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we pray that thou wilt bless the word of truth which 
has been imperfectly spoken. Oh, who can rise to the greatness of 
the argument? We are overwhelmed and distressed and rebuked at 
our inefficiency ; and are ashamed to think that we undertake to speak 
of themes like this. Yet weakness is blessed of God, and our emptiness 
is filled by thy fullness. Bless the truth of thyself. Winnow it, that 
nothing of chaff may go with it — that the pure wheat may remain in 
the imagination and in the memory. Bring forth by the power of the 
truth lordlier lives. Oh, may we look up to Jesus, and rejoice in him, 
and follow him, and be like him. And then bring us where thou art, O 
dear Lover of our souls, where we shall see and know, so that no man 
shall tell us any more anything; where we shall know as we are 
known. And to thy name shall be the praise, forever and ever. Amen. 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 






THE RICHES OF GOD. 



M But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he 
loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together 
with Christ (by grace are ye saved), and hath raised us up together, 
and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in 
the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace, in 
his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus." — Eph. ii. 4r-7. 



One of the most interesting studies in the New Testament 
is the progress of the development which may be traced in 
the mind of the Apostle Paul. From the time that he en- 
tered upon a Christian life to the time that he left it, there 
was in him, as there is or ought to be in every noble-minded 
person, a steady development and growth, so that the last 
part of his life was vastly richer than the earlier parts of it — 
more tender I mean. I do not refer to his conduct, for of 
that we know little ; but there is reflected from his later 
writings a light purer, more traoscendently elevated, than 
that which belonged to his earlier writings. For, whatever 
doctrine of inspiration you may hold, it is perfectly certain 
that inspiration always carries with it something of the mate- 
rial through which it acts, and that therefore human intelli- 
gence is a part of it, so that the laws of that intelligence are 
also taken into consideration. There is no such thing as a 
divine revelation or a divine inspiration which takes out of 
the divine nature, as it were, the picture of a truth, and puts 
it into the world without any human mixture. Material 
things are discovered to us through human organs ; and the 

Sunday Morning, January 18, 1874. Lesson : Eph. i. Hymns (Plymouth Collec- 
tion) : Nos. 162, 660, "Homeward Bound." 



408 TEE RICHES OF GOD. 

progress of knowing the things which we see or hear implies 
the exercise, the education, the finer development of the senses 
themselves. And that which is true of the lower nature or 
mind of man is still more true of the higher reason, which 
works through the moral sense, and perceives interior divine 
truths, which are as much higher than common truths as the 
soul is higher than the body. 

Now, that part of the apostle's life, near its close, when 
he was writing in prison, was the most notable part. The 
studies, the scenes of labor, of a great many remarkable men 
have been preserved, and have been visited. I went to see 
where Jonathan Edwards wrote his Treatise on the Will, in 
old Stockbridge, and sat down in the chair that he used, and 
at the table where he worked. In Scotland, I went to the 
house where John Knox lived, and sat down in his study- 
room. I went, in Geneva, to the church where John Calvin 
preached, and went into the pulpit where he so many times 
stood. I should be glad if Bedford Jail were yet standing, 
and I could go into that, and see where it was that John 
Bunyan wrote his memorable Pilgrim's Progress, But of all 
places on earth, the one that I would first visit, if it were yet in 
existence, and I could, would be the sepulcher of the Saviour ; 
and next to that would be the old Eoman prison where Paul 
wrote. Dark, manacled, watched over by a soldier perpetu- 
ally, he sent forth from that cold and desolate spot a light 
which has redeemed captivity, which has dissipated darkness, 
which has inspired manhood, which not only has made all 
mankind akin one to another, but has united this visible 
world with the invisible spiritual kingdom. And in the last 
letters which he wrote, during the closing years of his life, 
he was caught up, and rendered intensely conscious of the 
divine nature — of the riches that were in God, revealed 
through Christ. It was made still larger to his comprehen- 
sion by the revelation of the Holy Ghost, which was given to 
him as it was given to all those who are prepared for it, and 
will take it. This was the direction in which his mind trav- 
eled as he grew richer, stronger, older (that is, younger ; be- 
cause the older we grow the nearer we are to being born into 
the spiritual world, which is the true birth). The nearer ho 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 409 

came to that world, the more experience he had, and the 
more it seemed to concentrate upon this thought — the ex- 
ceeding riches of God in goodness, in grace, in mercy, in 
love, in kindness, in everything which we have a word to ex- 
press in that direction. 

Now, when I preach this view of God, unfolding the 
greatness of his goodness, I am cut short, often, in your 
thoughts, and in other people's criticisms, "by the declaration 
that this is a truth which is true only to those who have com- 
plied with the conditions of salvation, and who are therefore 
Christians ; and that preaching it generically, in distinction 
from preaching it to the " elect," is misusing Scripture. I 
wish to say a word on that point before I go on to the discus- 
sion of the real subject of this discourse. 

"We have among us an eminent English scientific man, 
Mr. Proctor, who is delivering lectures on Astronomy. Are 
those lectures for the drunken creatures that inhabit Five 
Points in New York, or are they not ? If they are not 
for them, why are they not ? They are for everybody who 
has the capacity or intelligence to take them in. They really 
come to the understanding of comparatively few ; but they 
are just as much open to the reception of everybody else as to 
these few, if they can receive them. They are addressed to 
whomsoever will; but whosoever will not, and wliosoever can 
not, have to stand aside, on account of the limitations of 
their education. 

Now, the doctrine of the inherent universal nature of God 
is a doctrine of goodness and mercy and ineffable love. It is 
not a doctrine that God is ineffably kind and good to those 
who have been " elected," who have " made their calling and 
election sure," and who have come into the charmed circle 
inside of which God shines, and outside of which he does not ; 
it *s the doctrine of God's universal nature, which is appre- 
ciated by those who are called, just as a lecture is appre- 
ciated by those who are called. The intelligent understand 
the lecture, and the unintelligent do not, though it is as 
much for the unintelligent as for the intelligent. 

God's nature is not specialized and parceled out. God's 
great attributes are not like legal documents, written and 



410 *THE RICHES OF GOD, 

sent by post to particular persons, none being allowed to 
take them out of the post-office except those whose names 
are on them. What God is, he is to all — or would be if they 
would understand him. The God of the whole earth is he. 
The universal Father is he. In him there is neither Jew 
nor Gentile, bond nor free, male nor female. All are as one, 
in God. 

Therefore the truth of the bountifulness and largeness of 
God's grace and goodness is true for everybody, provided 
everybody will put himself in a relation to take it. The rea- 
son why the sun produces in one place geraniums, camellias, 
azaleas, all forms of exquisite flowers, and does not produce 
them in another place, is not in the sun. The cause of the 
difference is in the use to which you put the sun. It shines 
on the south side of my barn ; and what does it produce 
there ? A warm spot, where chickens and cows gather. It 
shines on the south side of my neighbor's barn ; and what 
does it produce there ? Flowers and grapes. "What is the 
reason of the difference ? Does the sun change ? No, but 
it is put to different uses. It is just the same sun, with just 
the same vivific power to all ; but its effects are different 
when it is differently employed. In one man's hands it 
amounts to nothing, because he does not make any use of it ; 
but in another man's hands it amounts to a great deal, be- 
cause he does make use of it, and makes it do a great deal 
for him. The nature of God is the same to all men ; but 
the effects are not the same on all men, because they do not 
all put it to the same uses. 

There is a sense in which every man may be said to make 
his own God. (I am now speaking of his conception of God. 
God is made by no one absolutely. In these times, however, 
it is necessary that we should walk very carefully, and ex- 
plain ourselves at every step. We do not know what may 
happen !) Every man forms for himself his conception of 
God. He* "has helps, he has foregoing statements, he has 
analogies, he has reasonings, he has experiences ; but, after 
all, any person to whom God comes as a reality is one who, 
besides employing these instruments and aids, shapes them 
into a vital image or conception in his own mind. 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 411 

God has never been seen. He has never revealed himself 
in chapters and sections. He is revealed, to be sure, in the 
popular use of that term, by words in Scripture ; but then 
these words are qualities, or signs of qualities, and it is 
necessary that we. should have, or should have had, a spark 
of those qualities in our own selves in order to understand 
what the words mean. For instance, take the sentence, 
"God is just." If a man has never known justice in him- 
self, or in others, the word does not mean anything to him. 
The interpretation of this word to a man is in the man's own 
knowledge or experience. 

And so it is in forming a conception of God. Though it 
is revealed to us in Scripture terms, those terms themselves 
cannot be understood by us except so far as by personal ex- 
perience, or by observation, which is a kind of experience, 
we have entered into the meaning of the word. 

Now, to some extent God is revealed in the Old Testa- 
ment, but not as exclusively as in the New. There are some 
things which make known the divine nature to the world as 
exquisite in the Old Testament as in the New : but mainly 
in the Old Testament God is represented as being the reg- 
nant Power ; as having control over nature and over nations ; 
as conducting universal government, and maintaining the 
visible creation. And that was a true and appropriate view, 
for the human mind, in the earlier periods of the world, was 
occupied with physical experiences. The first struggle of the 
race has reference to outward conditions. First there are 
households ; households united constitute neighborhoods ; 
neighborhoods combined constitute States ; and States asso- 
ciated form nations or empires. Out of these inter-relations 
physical life is wrought. Social life comes close upon that. 
But the higher forms even of national life are slowly evolved. 
And the Whole of human intelligence being occupied with 
these things in earlier civilization, the thoughts of men by 
which they frame a conception of God would naturally spring 
from these material elements. And as in the Bible God is 
always revealed on the principle of adaptation to want, you 
will find that the earlier revelations represent him as a God 
of administrative power — as a God of law and government. 



41 2 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

In the New Testament, that is, in the fullness, in the 
ripeness of time, the other view of God having, as it were, 
been established — having grown by the stem, and made itself 
strong with ligneous development — now came the blossoming 
period ; and on that view of God as an administrator was 
developed the idea of a God of goodness, of gentleness, of 
sweetness, of patience, of suffering, of ?<m#suffering, and of 
tenderness. Although those qualities existed to some small 
degree in antiquity, and their germs are plainly discernible 
here and there in the Older Eeve-lation, yet they had then no 
such development as they have had in later times. Therefore, 
as we develop our conception of the Divine Being out of our 
experience and observation, it must needs follow that the finer 
and nobler traits of God's nature would appear at some inter- 
val, or in some sequence, after what we may call the frame- 
work of the divine personality had been laid. And the anal- 
ogy would lead us to believe that the germs given to us of the 
interior disposition of God in the Old Testament will go on 
unfolding and producing in men noble qualities and traits, 
and that out of these traits and qualities, by the imagination 
(that is, by faith ; for faith is truth acting through the imag- 
ination), there will be transferred to God yet higher concep- 
tions; so that as the ages wear on the name of God will 
grow larger, and the contents of that name will be richer and 
more beneficent to the very end. 

Paul's idea of God, then, was efflorescent and tropical. It 
grew in him all the way through his life. No longer to him 
was God a national God. The lowest idea of God is that he 
is a God of place. Jacob seems to have had that idea when 
he was running from the face of his angered brother, whom 
he had cheated, and when he lay down on a heap of stones, 
and slept, and God — or rather that which brought to him the 
idea of God — appeared to him ; so that when he awoke, he 
said, "Lo, God is here, and I knew it not." He happened 
to go to sleep in a place where God lived, as he supposed. 

Such was the early notion of God. But it was augmented 
in the conception of the Jews. They believed that he was the 
God of the Israelites — the God of all Israel. The Jews' con- 
ception of a national God was so strong that although they 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 413 

enlarged it in one way they did not in another. They be- 
lieved that the whole earth was to be swallowed ' up and 
become Jewish, and that then God would be the God of the 
whole earth. They firmly adhered to the thought that he 
was the God of the Jews. The idea that he would ever be 
the God of the Greeks, or of the outside world, never entered 
the Jewish mind. It was so repulsive to the Jews that it was 
enough to bring down a whole shower of arguments on the 
head of anybody who dared to advance it — arguments in the 
shape of stones. It was quite late before the idea entered 
the mind of the Jews — the apostolic Jews — that God was a 
God of the whole human family. 

The idea of a God of salvation, as distinguished from a 
God of attributes and of legislative and executive powers, 
came still later. The conception of a God of ineffable dispo- 
sitions ; of a God such that, on being presented, the soul 
would fall in love with him ; of a God so radiant and so beau- 
tiful that when once the vision of him rose before men they 
would rush toward it as children rush toward a meadow full 
of flowers and fruits ; of a God so rich as to draw all men 
spontaneously to him by the inherent loveliness of his nature 
operating on human imagination and affection — that concep- 
tion came a great deal later. You may well say that it came 
late, because it has not come yet, except in spots. 

Do you ask me if I believe in election ? I certainly do. 
I believe that some men are elected to be mathematicians, and 
some I know are not. I believe that some men are elected to 
be poets : some are not. Some men are elected to think 
with the perceptive faculties, and some are left out of that 
election. Some are elected to be thoughful with the philo- 
sophical faculties, and others are not so elected. 

Kow, there are a great many men who are "elected." 
That is, they are born of their mother and father with such 
moral susceptibilities that they can take in the idea of this 
soul-filling, soul-enriching and soul-rejoicing God. There are 
others that are born so that they can take it in but imper- 
fectly, little by little, and only as the result of long-continued 
education. This is election — receptive capacity. It is inside 
election, not outside election. 



414 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

The God that is ordinarily presented to men is not rich — 
except in the sense of property. He owns the world. Cali- 
fornia, and all the continent this side of it he owns. (To 
those in California that is the center of the world, and this is 
the fringe; but to us this is the center of the world, and that 
is the fringe. Everybody, every nation, is conceited ; and 
they think they live right at the navel, and that everything 
radiates from them in every direction.) He owns the cattle 
on a thousand hills. The heaven is his, and the earth is his. 
But these possessions do not make him rich, unless he is a 
man, and is susceptible of being enriched by physical things 
— as he is not. As he is taught in the majority of instances 
God is not rich to men's imagination ; nor to their sense of 
domestic delicacy ; nor to their sense of love, with all its end- 
less inflections and variations ; nor to their sense of magna- 
nimity ; nor to their sense of generosity ; nor to their sense 
of those finer traits which come later in the development of 
the human race, and grow finer, and involve in thnm a more 
perfect development of the higher faculties which belong to 
the human soul. Those traits in the divine natnre are not 
properly apprehended. So I think I may say thr-fc the God 
whom men think of is very poor. We have impoverished 
God. 

When I present to you the name of Astor, what do you 
think of ? Oh ! millions, and millions and millions of dol- 
lars. Money is what you think of in connection with him. 
When I present to you the name of Shakespeare what do you 
think of ? Not a dollar. Nobody ever thinks of any such 
thing when he is mentioned. In connection with his name 
We think of observation, of philosophy, of poetry, of all 
dramatic conceptions and perceptions. We think of a nature 
rich in those elements. When I present to you the name of 
Homer you have a sense of distinct associations as connected 
with that name. Names mean a multitude of things. When, 
going into. the household, I present to you the name, mother, 
you are conscious not only that she was the author of your 
outward life, but that she has as much been the author of 
your inward life. There are some mothers who never wean 
their children. They are weaned by the mouth, but not by 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 415 

the heart ; and they as much derive their life from mother or 
father when they are themselves fifty or sixty years of age, as 
they did when they were but five or six years old. And when 
you mention the name of such an one what does it bring to 
you? 

When one speaks the name of my mother, and says to 
me, " Koxana," it is no Greek that I think of ; it is she 
that was a Connecticut woman, bred in an obscure neighbor- 
hood, quiet and retiring, but full of deep pondering of 
things beyond her age, and of a heart rich and rare. And 
is there a person here who has not a name — somebody's 
name — which, when he hears it, distils a sweet influence 
upon his imagination, or rains down joyful emotive feelings 
on his heart ? These are familiar instances. Names? They 
are wonder-workers. A single name will send fire through 
twenty thousand men. A name ? When the united armies 
of the North returned from the sad but necessary war with 
the South, and marched through Washington, and Sher- 
man's name was sounded in their ear, what a heaven-rending 
shout went up ! Just one word was uttered ; but what an 
effect it produced ! 

Now, when I mention the name of God, what does it 
bring to you ? Catechism ; confession of faith ; doctrine ; 
abstract philosophy ; something that you are afraid of, and 
do not exactly know how, or why, or when, or where. Is 
there any other name so wwrich to you, for the most part, as 
this ? Hare and there have been souls with such a knowledge 
of Jesus Christ that to them his name was above every other 
name, in heaven and on earth : but take men collectively ; 
take a congregation like this (a congregation as well brought 
up, certainly, as any ordinary congregation ; better, you 
think ; but I guess you are a fair average of mankind), and 
when the name of God is propounded to them, what "s 
it ? What is it to you ? A name that makes your soul 
quiver ? 

When you are tried and worn and made sad by your busi- 
ness, and some one says to you, " Your wife and children 
expect you home early," how it rubs the wrinkles out of your 
brow! — I hope it does. You feel at once as though a strain 



416 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

jf music had come into your care and trouble. New though ta 
and feelings are brought to you. 

Now, when, in the midst of your cares and troubles, men 
say " God" to you, what does it do ? Does it touch you ? 
Is there anything in it to you ? Does it shake down the dews 
of heaven upon you ? Is there in it everything that is gentle, 
and tender, and sweet, and loving, and lovable ? Does it 
mean all that you ought to be, and wish to be, and ten mill- 
ion times more ? Does it represent to you One who has such 
love that he loves those who are in trespasses and sins ? Did 
you ever read that sentence ? I am afraid you have read 
other books more than you have the Bible. 

" God, who is rich, in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved 
us, even when we were dead in sins." 

Is this the thought of God : that he is a Being who is so 
■wonderful in love that when he looks out upon men, and sees 
them dead, dead, dead in sin, he not only pities them, and 
sorrows for them, and waits on them, but loves them ? 

How can God love a man that is in sin ? I do not know ; 
I should be more like God than I am now if I knew alto- 
gether ; but I do know a little. 

A wife has followed the husband of her youth through all 
his declining periods, till he has come to be a brute — a fester 
— a lump of sickness and wretchedness, and is as foul inside 
as he is loathsome outside. The father and mother forbid 
him the house ; the neighbors consider him a repulsive thing ; 
the whole community wish he was dead ; but this one woman 
stands by him night and day, giving up everything she has — 
father, and mother, and children even — for his sake. She 
holds on to a life as full of misery as it can be packed, for no 
other reason than to try to take care of that poor fellow. 
And when at last he dies, and everybody says, " Thank God, 
the monster is gone," she says, " Oh ! oh ! oh ! don't, don't, 
don't speak so. I loved him !" 

Is there not such a love as that in a wife's heart — not in 
every instance, but in some instances ? And where did she 
get it ? There is a Fountain from which such experiences 
spring. Whoever has any noble trait gets it from God, who 
is rich. 



THE RICHES OF GOB. 417 

What constitutes riches ? I asked, in New Hampshire, 
how much it took to make a farmer rich there ; and I was 
told that if a man was worth five thousand dollars he was 
considered rich. If a man had a good farm, and had ten 
thousand dollars out at interest, oh ! he was very rich — pass- 
ing rich. I dropped a little further down, into Concord, 
where some magnates of railroads live (they are the aristocrats 
just now), and I found that the idea of riches was quite dif- 
ferent there. A man there was not considered rich unless he 
had a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in 
pretty clear stuff — not hypothecated riches. I go to New 
York and ask men how much it takes to make one rich, and 
they say, " There never was a greater mistake made than that 
of supposing that five or six hundred thousand dollars make a 
man rich. What does that sum amount to ?" I go into the 
upper circles of New York where millionaires, or men worth 
a million dollars or over, used to he considered rich ; and 
there if a man is worth five or ten millions it is thought that 
he is coming on. It is said, "He will be rich one of these 
days." When a man's wealth amounts to fifty or a hundred 
millions he is very rich. 

Now if such is the idea of riches in material things, what 
must riches be when you rise above the highest men to angels, 
and above angels to God ? What must be the circuit which 
makes riches, when it reaches him ? And when you apply this 
term, increscent, to the Divine nature, as it respects the qual- 
ities of love and mercy, what must riches be in God, the in- 
finite, whose experiences are never less wide than infinity ? 
What must be love and mercy, and their stores, when it is 
said that God is rich in them ? 

If a noble, heroic man is rich in a quality, carry it up into 
saintship, carry it up into angelhood, carry it up through 
principalities and powers and dominions ; and then there is an 
infinite stretch before God is reached ; but sweep it by faith 
on and on ; and what must it be in him ? 

Now, is there any such conception of God in your mind, 
as that he is rich in grace, in love, in mercy, in tenderness, 
in forbearance, in patience, in delicacy, in fineness, in those 
rare things which make everybody tingle with admiration 



418 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

when he sees them in some heroic nature ? Does the name oi 
God bring to yon any such association as that ? I do not 
mean to ask whether your God has a good deal of hand-power; 
T do not mean to ask whether he can make stars as boys make 
snowballs ; I do not mean to ask whether he can think a good 
deal, and put thoughts together in endless magnificent logic ; 
I do not mean anything of that sort ; but is he rich in soul ? 
Is he rich in those directions which Jesus Christ opened when 
he thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made 
himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a 
servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and humbled 
himself, and willingly accepted death, and picked out, as it 
were, the worst death known to human nature — the death of 
the cross ? Is he rich in the sense which was implied when 
Christ told his disciples that they were the strongest and no- 
blest and best who were the slaves of men ? Is he rich in 
those particulars to which the Saviour referred when he rep- 
resented to his followers their duty, and pointed out the line 
of their growth, by taking a towel and washing their feet, and 
saying, "If I, your Lord and Master, do this, I do it to show 
you how much more it should be done by you" ? Is there 
any such conception of riches in your idea of God ? 

What are the reasons, then, of this comparative poverty 
of conception in regard to the divine nature ! One reason is, 
that men look more upon the external and less upon the 
internal revelation of God in nature, derived from human 
experiences. I believe that in our day God is revealing him- 
self by the hands of natural philosophers. I will not take a 
narrow view of the office which is being performed by the 
thinking men of our time. I am not alarmed at what may 
be called the personal infidelity of these men. They are all 
workers together, though they do not know it. 

Go with me into a silk factory, and take down one of the 
most exquisite pieces of silk, and unroll it. Oh, what a 
beautiful pattern ! What exquisite colors ! What fineness of 
texture ! What magnificent figures ! Why, it is charming ! 

Now, let us see how that is made. We will go back step 
by step till we come to the loom where it was woven. We see 
this machine, that does not know what it is doing, throwing 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 419 

its shuttles by some operation which it cannot understand. 
Let us go further back. We see men in one of the rooms 
punching holes here and there in a pasteboard card, according 
to some plan which has been devised ; and these holes mean fig- 
ures. When the fabric is put on the loom in the proper way, 
in certain places given colors and given threads come out, or do 
not come out, according to these holes. The idea that they 
have any relation to the making of that silk, or helping to 
make it, seems perfectly absurd. But go further back, and 
you will find men spinning silk, and working on little bits of 
thread ; and if you are told that they are making such a 
fabric as that, you say, " They are not ; they are spinning 
single threads." What they are doing has not the slightest 
relation, apparently, to the fabric. Go back further yet, and 
you will find men up to their elbows in nasty-looking dye- 
stuff, in a badly smelling room, and all smouched themselves. 
I say, "You recollect those exquisite colors which you saw : 
these men are making them." "These men making those 
colors ? Preposterous ! Absurd !" On going further back, 
we find boys and girls, six, eight or ten of them, winding up 
little bits of films from yellow cocoons. These boys and girls 
are talking and laughing with each other, and I say, "They 
are working for that silk fabric." " Do not tell me any such 
stuff as that !" I take you one step further back. We go 
into the cocoonery where there is craunching that sounds 
like rain falling on a roof, and I show you millions of little 
ugly-looking worms, and say, " These are the folks, after all, 
that are making the silk." " What ! these worms ? " " Yes, 
these ivorms." 

Now, then, take a Christian, according to the ordinary 
acceptation of that term. A Christian in this world is — 
well, a minister, or a deacon, that knows all theology, and 
keeps Sunday, and observes all the proprieties of the sanc- 
tuary, and lives an admirable, blameless life, and holds the 
faith of the Church exactly right. Men look on such a man, 
and say, " There, that is what I call a regular churchman, 
and a good Christian man." I present to them Herbert 
Spencer; and th^y say, "What! that outrageous skeptic, 
Herbert Spencer ? He, mentioned in the same day with that 



420 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

excellent Christian man — that admirable churchman ?" 1 
present to them John Stuart Mill. " Why !" they say, "he 
did not believe in a God, even." So those worms did not 
know that they were making silk. They did not believe in 
silk. If you had told them about silk they could not have un- 
derstood you. 

What fools you are ! What a fool I am ! What fools all 
men are ! How preposterously we reason about things ! Do 
you suppose everything in the world is going to run according 
to your pendulum ? Is there not a common scheme which 
regulates the affairs of this globe ? and are not all men work- 
ing in obedience to that scheme, and working in their own 
way, God being the great Architect ? Is not everybody 
working, whether he knows it or not, toward the final con- 
summation of things. 

There are riches in stellar discoveries, in chemical dis- 
coveries, in things that the microscope reveals, in things that 
the telescope reveals ; and it matters very little to me whether 
individual workers, who are bringing about effects, and arriving 
at deductions, believe as the Jews did, as the Brahmins do, or 
as I do. So far as their work is concerned, they are working 
together in the cause of the world's progress. If religion is 
the truth of God in its essence and absolute reality, it never 
can be rubbed out ; and I am not afraid. Those who work 
most to rub it out are often those who do most to diffuse it, 
and cleanse it, and bring it into power. 

Nevertheless, when scientific men, in the earlier stages, 
work to bring out the truth of God, they of necessity work by 
the senses ; they work with the exterior physical organs ; and 
they bring out that truth of the divine nature which has re- 
lation to materiality. And if you have only what is called a 
scientific God — a God that presides over the alembic, over 
chemistry, over dynamics, over physical elements, you have a 
real God ; but he is not a God that makes heaven rich and 
the earth musical. 

When you go further, to those who teach the nature of 
God, the will of God, the law of God, and the government of 
God, these are often preached so out of all proportion that 
men come to conceive of God as really very much what Judge 



THE RICHES OF QOD. 421 

Noah Davis is, sitting with books before him, a good and kiDd 
man personally, but not at all at liberty to use his goodness, 
and saying, " Here am I, gentlemen, to dispense justice. I 
am very sorry for that man ; but he has done wrong, and I can 
not stir an inch. I am bound to take the law and administer 
it on him." So men transfer to their conception of God that 
which, in the weakness of human administration, we are 
obliged to make use of, because no man is large enough to be 
intrusted with following his own feelings in judging men. 
But God is not such a Judge or. Administrator as that. He 
is large enough to say, ' i I will have mercy on whom I will 
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have 
compassion." His will and thought are adequate to every 
emergency and occasion. But still, we have a legal God pre- 
sented to us. 

Now, a man may admire justice, but no man ever loves it. 

I heard one of my old friends — a rude man, with a great 
deal of soul-depth in his composition (for as when you break 
open stones you may find crytals, so, when you break him 
open, like a geode, you find that he is full of precious quali- 
ties) — I heard him say, "When my house was burning, I 
stood over across the way and looked at it without any very 
great trouble of mind ; I said, ' Thank God, that house burns 
as well as any rich man's.' I stood it very well (the tears ran 
down his cheeks as he said it) till I saw the bedroom burning, 
where my children were born, where the cradle was, and 
where I used to kneel down and pray. I cried then." He 
could see the garret and the cellar burn ; but when it came 
to burning the room where his children used to gather about 
him, that touched him. And so it is with our God. That 
side of God which deals with matter never draws men with 
more than admiration. It is that side of God which repre- 
sents the social and the moral that develops not only admira- 
tion but attraction and love. 

Then the mode in which God is presented to men for the 
sake of stopping them in evil and drawing them toward good 
takes away, substantially, from thousands of men, all power 
and all sweetness in the name of God. 

There is the presentation of an idea which has almost be- 



422 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

come a pulpit or theological custom — namely, that every 
faithful minister must first preach the Law to sinners ; that 
the law-work must be done on everybody first ; and that after 
that work is done, then everything that is in the Gospel may 
be introduced. If you run it back to its philosophy, it is 
this : that, as men are made, the only way to stop them from 
going wrong, and turn them back toward good, is to deal with 
their conscience ; to awaken their sense of fear; to lay the 
rule of right and wrong on them. It is thought that when 
the consequences of wrong-doing are placed before them they 
will cease doing wrong, and retrace their steps. And when 
that operation has been performed on the subject he is ready 
to have another of a higher grade performed. 

A doctor says of his patient, " Give that first — it will take 
down the fever ; and when that has taken effect, and he has 
begun to get better, put in your quinine." 

So these men say, "Let the fear-work, the conscience- 
work be done first ; and then put in love." 

Now, our seminaries, and a large proportion of our minis- 
ters, teach that ; and there is a certain element of truth in 
it ; but it is not the whole truth ; nor is it a good truth to 
proceed on, unless it is on the general principle of the " fool- 
ishness of preaching." 

How is it with the family ? I hold that there is no family 
which is not better for having a stick in it. I think that 
must be a very foolish child that grows up without ever being 
whipped — that is, if I may take my own experience as a cri- 
terion. I would not be understood very literally in this mat- 
ter. There are some children that really seem born in the 
wrong world, they are so good ; but as a general rule such 
children die early. Almost all saints among children die 
early. They do not hold out a great while. If they live they 
are not saints ; and if they are saints they do not live, for the 
most part. But now and then there are children of such a 
nature that you do not have to chastise them. Let me say, 
however, that it is not altogether owing to the nature of the 
child. It is due to the wisdom of the parent in a great 
measure. 

Take a great wise-hearted mother, and give her all the 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 423 

time she needs, and endow her with insight into character, 
and let her meet her one child at every single step so that 
before he knows it she is bringing influences to bear which 
change the operation of his thoughts and feelings, and she 
can bring him up without once smiting or coercing him. 

But suppose she was a poor woman, with a very large 
brain, and a very small body, and therefore very nervously 
organized ; suppose she had twelve children ; and suppose 
she could not get at any one of them more than about once a 
day, because she had to work for them all, early and late. 
People would say to her, perhaps, ' i Bring up your children 
by the use of moral suasion — that is the way." " Moral non- 
sense !" she very likely would say; "I have to bring up my 
children as I can." In such a family as that, a whip is a very 
nice thing, whatever sentimentalists may say of it. I go in 
for the woman who, having brought up eight strapping boys, 
and brought them up well, on being asked, " How did you 
bring them up ?" said, " I brought them up in the fear of 
God and the horsewhip." 

There is a truth, therefore, in bringing up children by 
the use of love, and there is also a truth in bringing up chil- 
dren by the infliction of pain. Pain is medicinal, and very 
good, oftentimes. 

Nevertheless, — looking all through the bringing up of the 
child in the family, till it is five, eight, ten, twelve, fifteen 
years of age, when it is beginning to feel all the germs of 
after life without any of the knowledges or experiences of 
after life, and tracing the conduct of the parent from begin- 
ning to end, — which predominates, fear and pain, or love, and 
patience, and gentleness and counsel ? Why, I tell you that 
a mother's heart does more in the bringing up of children, a 
million times, than a mother's hand, though the hand is 
sometimes quite busy. Both elements are there ; but as the 
child grows older, and he comes to have respect and venera- 
tion for his mother, he is stopped more from wrong-doing by 
reason of his mother's tenderness and his mother's tears than 
by reason of the authority which she exercises over him. 
Many and many a child is carried through exigencies of evil 
by a mother's love. 



424 THE RICHES OF GOB. 

But it is said. "You must treat human nature first 
by law." If I had tried everything else to no purpose I 
should try law too ; but suppose I should proclaim this doc- 
trine : ' ' No man can do anything with stones unless he blasts 
them with powder"? I go on that theory in building my 
house. I have the stones brought to the spot ; some could 
be fitted and managed without breaking, and a hammer's blow 
would break most of the others ; but " "No," I say to the work- 
men, "you know the doctrine. You must bore a hole in every 
stone, and put in powder. Observe the law first, blast them, 
and then you can go on and face them, and put them in their 
places." 

I say, where you cannot break stone with a hammer, and 
where you cannot do anything else, why, then blast it with 
powder ; but do not be bound to that particular method 
when other better methods might be employed. 

In teaching men about the moral nature of the govern- 
ment under which they live, I should deal with them accord- 
ing to circumstances. In the coarser elements of society un- 
doubtedly there is to be a more vigorous appeal to the imag- 
ination, and a larger proportional use of fear ; but fear itself 
is only instrumental, and relative to the next higher element. 
You may find it wise to use fear for the sake of not having to 
use it next time. You may start with fear for the sake of by 
and by using higher motives. But any system of preaching 
which perpetually dwells on law, and divine vengeance, and 
God's justice (as distinguished from his love), and which 
steadily holds up from year to year in the congregation 
nothing higher than conscience, conscience, conscience, 
although it means well, is a preaching that impoverishes God 
in the minds of the people. Out of such preaching can never 
come that notion of God which is the glory of the New Tes- 
tament. A few persons may break through it, and find the 
Christ that is sent for them ; but the mass of men in the con- 
gregation will live and die without ever having come to the 
riches of the goodness and grace of God as they are repre- 
sented through Jesus Christ. 

There are other causes which tend to impoverish our con- 
ception of God, but I cannot pause to speak of them now. 



THE RICHES OF GOB. 425 

I remark first, in closing, that everyone may measure the 
state which he is in by the feeling that the name of God 
brings to him ; by the memories, the associations, the loves, 
the hopes, the raptures that it excites in him. 

God is the consummation of everything that is noble, 
beautiful and rare. Every quality that excites admiration in 
a generous or noble mind exists in God in infinite proportions 
and developments ; and the growth which you have made is 
manifested by the receptivity which is in you when the name 
of God is disclosed. Not only is it "a name above every 
name," but it is a name that should bring to you thousands 
and thousands of the rarest and sweetest and noblest associa- 
tions. 

Below the old cathedral of Antwerp, I sat on the sidewalk ; 
and as beggars usually sit there, the passers-by looked queerly 
at me, to see what sort of a beggar I might be ; but as I asked 
no alms, and took none, no one spoke to me. I sat there, on 
a bit of wood, with the cathedral over against me. About the 
base of the great edifice were booths and trading shops — for in 
some parts of Europe they pollute their churches by building 
worldly houses, trafficking places, right up against the base. 
But at every quarter of an hour there rang out from the bel- 
fry far up in the air the sounds of, I should think, some 
twenty or thirty bells — sounds like silver — the finest and most 
exquisite sounds I ever heard, underlaid and enriched by the 
more sonorous tones of larger bells. In their whirls and 
combinations the air seemed to catch these sounds and spread 
them ; and it appeared as if all manner of little sprites and 
angel imps were dancing and floating in the air. When I 
think of that cathedral, I do not remember its walls, and its 
buttresses, and the people that were about its base, except 
that I have strange reminiscences of them in a generic way ; 
but I remember very distinctly the impressions made in me by 
the magnificent rush of sounds from that spire, lifted up 
above all noise of traffic, where no dirt or anything that 
would defile could reach, and yet descending to bless the 
toilers below with the sweetness and purity of those realms of 
the upper air. 

"What, then, is the name of God to you ? Is it doctrine ? 



426 THE RICHES OF GOD. 

Is it the foundation of the church ? Is it the place below 
where the great congregation gather ? Or, is it the rush of 
melodious sounds of sweetness, and love, and goodness, and 
mercy, and patience, and long-suffering, and magnanimity, 
and pity ? Is it riches in these things that come sounding 
down to you from that great name, God ? 

You can measure yourself, your growth, your state, by the 
report in yourself, by your own experience, when your heart 
turns toward the thought of God. 

I remark, again, that the conceptions which we have of 
God are not exaggerated, though they are disproportionate. 
We are often told that in preaching we ought to have a pro- 
portional view of God. I say that that is simply impossible. 
You might as well say that we ought to have a proportional 
view of the stellar universe. When we do not know one in a 
million of stars, how can we tell whether they are baked, or 
half baked, or cast solid ? Who can take the statistics of the 
stars, and make any proportional statement with regard to 
them ? 

Now as to God, we cannot understand a millionth part of 
his being. We can say that we understand the qualities of 
the divine nature ; we can say that we understand the direc- 
tion in which it will lead us when we explore it ; but we can- 
not form a proportional view of God. 

We are not, however, in any danger of exaggerating the 
divine goodness and love and mercy. If men say to me, 
"You preach a God of good nature and effeminate love," 
it is not true. I do not preach any such God as that. I 
do not preach a God of effeminate love. Of all things that 
are powerful, the love of God is the most so. It is a love that 
punishes as well as rewards. Down from the judgment-seat 
where God sits comes condemnation as well as approval. 
Flaming eyes and a brow of indignation as much belong to 
love as smiles and sweet caresses. Love has in it all the force 
and cogency that is needed for a vigorous and efficient ad- 
ministration. A mother's love is not inconsistent with a 
mother's wrath. And ah, the wrath of the mother ! What 
do you care for a shrew that does not care for you ? If she, 
with voice shrill and angry, scolds and storms at vou, what 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 427 

do you care for that ? I do not care for the rebuke of those 
to whom I am indifferent and who are indifferent to me. It 
is when those that I love, and who love me, chastise and 
chide me, tlfat I am grieved. The most terrible of all justice 
is love-justice. Heathen justice and brute justice, such as 
is generally attributed to God, is the poorest and meanest of 
all stuffs that were ever swept into the limbo of vanity. I 
preach no conception of a God that is not invested with vigor 
and power, and that has not in his love all that is needed for 
force, for the incarnation of justice, for the keeping away of 
harm from those whom he loves, and for restoring from their 
troubles those who must be restored as men are who have 
taken too much opium, by being smitten and made to walk. 
I preach no effeminate love. I preach a love that carries in 
it all that is necessary for the salvation of the race, if men 
will use it for restoration, and not for destruction. 

You cannot exaggerate God's goodness. He is better 
than poets' songs have represented him. He is better than 
dying saints have imagined him to be. He is better than 
anything that it is possible for the thoughts of men to 
conceive. He is One that is " able to do exceeding abun- 
dantly above all that we ask or think." When we shall " see 
him as he is," in the world that is to come, the reality will 
transcend any conception which we have formed ; and the 
memory of that which we have conceived will pass 
away. 

When I lived in the woods of Indiana, I used to hear a 
great deal of talk about the inflorescence of the prairies in 
spring. I tried to imagine what it was. I had never seen a 
prairie, and I was filled with curiosity to see one — especially 
at that season of the year when the flowers were in bloom, 
of which I had heard such glowing descriptions. I had to 
make up some sort of notion respecting them, and I did the 
best I could. I put my garden alongside of another ; and I 
added several others to these ; and then I thought of all the 
flowers they would contain ; but it was a comparatively lim- 
ited idea that I had in my mind. And I remember very well 
the morning when I first rode out upon a real rolling prairie. 
After passing through a piece of woods I struck it. The sun 



428 THE RICHES OE GOD. 

was shining aslant — for it was about nine o'clock ; the dew 
was on the grass, and on the flowers ; and very soon I was 
out at sea — or the effect was the same as if I had been. I 
could see no timber in any direction. It looked, as though 
the prairie went to a point where the sky touched it, in 
front, on the right, and on the left. The flowers covered 
every little swell and hill-side. It seemed as if all the flowers 
in creation had been collected there. 

Instead of little bits of flower-beds here and there, there 
were vast stretches of flowers. Here was a patch of pansies 
a mile long ; there was a patch of tulip3 two or three miles 
long ; and here was a patch of phlox five or six miles long. 
Here were great quantities of one sort of flower, and there 
were great quantities of another sort. Further than the eye 
could reach the ground was covered with flowers. It looked 
as though the sun had dropped down upon the earth and 
stained everything with its colors. And it was easy to con- 
ceive that if I should go on, and on, and on, if I should 
travel all day, and to-morrow, and the next day, and next 
week, I should still find flowers. And oh, what was my gar- 
den-conception of a prairie compared with what I took in 
when I saw one ? 

You build up your idea of God from the household, from 
the best persons you know, and from the highest experiences 
that you have had. You gather together on earth all those 
conceptions which to you make a heroic, noble, resjjlendent 
being, and the sum of these you call God. But how different 
is the idea which you have of him now from that which you 
will have of him when you see him as he is ! 

Do you know what emphasis there is in those words 
Wlien tue shall see kim as he is? The things that are 
past will grow dim and die away. They will be taper- 
lights at most. But the glory, the majesty, the magni- 
tude, the bounty, the sweetness, the transcendent riches 
of the divine Heart, will fill every soul that beholds God " as 
he is." Silence will first reign ; and then rapture will break 
forth from each heart, and heaven will resound with shouts 
of the redeemed. No man can learn here what it will be to 
feel the full power of the goodness and love and mercy of the 



THE RICHES OF GOB. 429 



» 



heart of God that has cleansed his. But we are all traveling 
toward that great tropical Center. 

When Kane was shut up in the north, two long winters 
passed in which he did not see a tree. He saw a few flowers 
under the edge of the glaciers, and he saw some birds that 
came from the south, and reminded him of summer down 
there ; but his was all an Arctic experience. When, how- 
ever, he had abandoned his anchorage, and had set his face 
southward, and had reached the Greenland settlements, a 
considerable change had taken place in the temperature. 
When, having met the relief ships, he had started southward 
again, a greater change had taken place. When he got so far 
south that he could see the water unobstructed by ice the 
change was still greater. Gradually, as he came on, the air 
grew warmer, and the winds grew balmier. More and more 
as he neared the temperate zone, everything became benign. 
And when at last he came to where he could smell the land, 
how great was the change ! What a transition it must have 
been from an Arctic winter to a temperate summer ! But 
when, finally, the harbor of New York opened upon his vis- 
ion, — and the green ground, the ample bowl for ships, — and 
thoughts and memories of his dear friends came hovering in 
upon him, who can tell what his feelings were ? 

And when, over this stormy sea of life, from these winter 
scenes and experiences, the soul goes sailing, through warmer 
and brighter climes, up toward the summer-land, and at last 
enters the harbor of God, and receives an abundant and choral 
entrance, who can tell what his emotions will be ? Then, 
when those whom he has known and who have known him on 
earth greet him, when angels welcome him, and when he sees 
"as he is" God himself, who fills heaven with his presence 
and majesty and glory, the experience will be such as it hath 
not entered the heart of man to conceive. 

Toward that land we are all going ; and what matters it 
that we suffer here ? What if we know anguish now and 
then ? What if we have disappointments ? What if ties are 
broken ? What if companions are separated ? What if pa- 
rents and children are taken from each other ? 

A poor working-man had no friend in the world except a 



430 THE RICHES OF GOD. 



% 



little child and a dog. The girl, that ever greeted him when 
he returned from his toil, died, and the dog was slain ; and 
he cursed God ; for life seemed to him no longer worth hav- 
ing. atheist, standing over the grave of love, do not dare 
to say that love has gone out ! Love never goes out — never ! 
God has taken your child, and it waits for you to go and 
take it again in its more glorified form. 

Dear friends, to whom life is solitary, you are crossing a 
desert on the other side of which are gardens, orchards, 
blessings transcendent ; and the scenes which you are pass- 
ing through here will make it all the more blessed when you 
reach it. So be patient. Do not curse God and die, as the 
wicked wife told Job to do. Do not say, " The heavens are 
black, and covered with sackcloth." Whom God loves he 
chastens, and he scourges every son whom he receives. 

Then bear patiently your burdens and trials. I present 
to you a God who is better than your love ever conceived him 
to be. He is a Father who will wipe away all tears from the 
eyes of his children. Trust in him. Eill your imagination 
full of the blessedness of a God who is rich in goodness, and 
mercy, and love, and pity ; and then hold on your way, and 
bear without complaint the things which trouble you now. 



THE RICHES OF GOD. 431 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

O Lord our God, why should any go forth this morning, and pray 
that the sun may shine upon them, that has arisen and poured down 
its abundance over the earth ? Why have we arisen ourselves, but 
that the light dawned, and called us from our sleep? Why should 
any go forth and stretch out their hands and ask for the air that they 
may breathe therein, when all around about the globe thou hast 
poured it forth abundantly, beyond the want of man and beast? And 
why should we draw near to thee and pray for the light of thy coun- 
enance and for the health of thy soul when thou hast filled the 
heavens and the universe where thy creatures are, and art every- 
where, and art quickening aud .drawing men up toward the higher 
and better life? Why should we solicit thee who art perpetually 
soliciting us to recognize thee? Why should we ask thy bounties 
when thou art beseeching us to take thy mercies? Why should we 
implore thy visits when all our lives long thou hast stood at the door 
knocking, thy head wet with the dew of the night? 

Rebuke us in love for our backwardness and unfaith. Rebuke 
us that we do not trust thee more than we do. Rebuke us that we 
bring barrenness to thee while thou art bringing to us perpetual 
bounty. For we are as the stones, and thou art as vines that creep 
over them. All beauty is upon them ; but it is not of the stones ; it 
is of thee, that dost cover them. Grant that we may feel that every- 
thing which we have comes from thy hand. Without thee, how dry 
we are, as sticks that lie in the field, homely and brown, till the sun 
makes them beautiful by shining upon them, and giving them its 
light. Grant that we may feel how poor and mean our life is of itself, 
but how glorious it becomes under the shining of God. How beauti- 
ful we may be when quickened by thy Spirit; and how exceeding 
beautiful we shall be when we have been fashioned and completed 
and made meet for our inheritance among the saints in glory! 

Be pleased, O God, to accept our recognition of our low estate, and 
our conviction of our innumerable sins, which cannot be catalogued 
— sins of thought; sins of imagination; sins of too much or too little 
feeling; sins of emptiness or of overf ullness ; sins of strength or of 
weakness wrongly placed. Thou knowest us altogether. Thou re- 
memberest our frame. Thou knowest that we are but of the dust, 
and that we are struggling away from it — many, with feet very 
weary ; many, upon paths that are very hard ; many with easily be- 
setting sins, that swarm in them as insects in mOrasses swarm about 
the unwary traveler. Thou knowest altogether our lot, and thou 
wilt not be unmindful of us. If our children were surrounded by a 
thousand troubles, how would our hearts melt for them ! And art not 
thou better than we are? Does not thy heart yearn toward us? Art 
thou not helping us to break away from our sins and from our trans- 
gressions ? Dost thou not hide them as behind the clouds ? Dost thou 
not bury them and sink them deeper than the bottom of the sea ? We 
rejoice in the kindliness and the bounty of forgiveness that are in thy 
nature. Grant that we may have more and more a conception of the 
riches of the goodness that is in God, so that thy name may become a 



432 THE RICHES OF GOB. 

name of power; a name of hope; a name of comfort ; a name of in- 
spiration ; and so that we may live, not as to our own selves, but as 
to God, and as of God. 

Bless, we pray thee, all that are in thy presence. Grant the desire 
of every heart, so far as that desire is for the good of each one. 
Teach all to pray so as that thy will may be done, and not theirs ; for 
thou art the all-thinking, the all-knowing and the all-loving God; 
and thou seest all our life. It has been ordained from the begin- 
ning. The life of all creatures is predestinated. Thou hast laid the 
line along which the human soul shall develop from the beginning of 
things ; and nothing hath interrupted nor checked its development 
along that line. Thou art still supervising and unfolding the same 
system as when the patriarchs trod the desert lands, and ages before ; 
and thou wilt go on supervising and unfolding it to the end. We 
rejoice in this perpetuity. We rejoice that we may feel that we 
are living along the ways of God's marking out. Teach every one of 
us, therefore, to so submit himself to thee, that he may be made by 
thy will comf ormable to those great elements of purity, of holiness, of 
sanctification and of salvation, which thou hast had before thee as 
the termination of thine administration from the very beginning. 
We rejoice in the far future. Death itself will be blessed to us if it 
shall bring us to thee, and to the consummation of that which we 
shall behold in thy person. 

Take away from every one, we pray thee, the fear of things present 
or of things to come ; for if God be for us who can be against us ? If 
nothing shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, 
what have we to fear ? Oh, take not that away from us which is our 
hope, our shield, our armor of offence and of def ence — thine own self ; 
the love of Jesus Christ which passeth knowledge ; the peace of God 
which passeth knowledge ; and the presence of God which passeth all 
knowledge and all words. 

We pray thy blessing to rest upon all those in our midst who are 
sick. Wilt thou comfort them in their sickness. Grant grace, mercy 
and peace to every one. Make thyself dearer and dearer unto every 
one. May all feel the tenderness of thy presence. May they feel the 
nursing hand of God. May his arm be as a father's arm, that lifts up 
the child that is weary with lying, and holds it in his bosom. 

We pray that thou wilt teach every one who is sick unto death 
how to go down rejoicing to the very gate that shall lead him forth. 
May every one be willing to do as thy servant of old did when an 
angel took him from the prison at night, and the gate opened be- 
fore their steps, and he was sent to find his own friends again. May 
those who are imprisoned in the body rejoice when the angel shall 
come, and shall lead them forth, and the gate shall open and let them 
out, that they may go to their own that are not here. 

Grant, we pray thee, that thy blessing may come to all those who 
labor in word and doctrine. We thank thee that there are so many 
who are willing to give their time thus. We pray that their willing- 
ness may not come simply as a compliance with duty, but as an eager 
impulse. May they feel, " Woe is me if I do not labor for other men." 

We pray for those who supervise our schools and mission labors; 



THE RICHES OF GOB. 433 

and for those who teach, or otherwise help to carry on these schools. 
May the Spirit of God rest upon them. And may these schools be 
mighty to spread abroad the influences of the truth as it is in Christ 
Jesus. 

We pray that the light of the Gospel may shine throughout the 
land. Bless the President of these United States, and all who are 
united to him in authority. Bless the Congress assembled. Bless the 
Legislatures assembled, or assembling. Bless all governors, judges 
and magistrates throughout this nation. We pray that our citizens 
may live lives full of industry, morality and piety. We pray that 
there may such truth, such justice, and such self-restraint that their 
bearing may have a salutary influence on men in other lanfJn, go 
that those who are in bondage may know how, by a larger manhood, 
to break forth out of bondage. And we beseech of thee that thou 
wilt give such growth that there shall be no power in shackles to 
hold the growiug nature. May men become free by becoming fuller 
and more full of the divine manhood. 

S<5 spread abroad thy kingdom everywhere, till the heavens shall 
descend, till the new heavens and the new earth in which are to dwell 
righteousness shall come, and all men shall see thy salvation. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be the praise ever- 
more. Amen. 



• <^i' • 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMOK 

O Lord ! thou art greater than our thoughts of thee. Thou art to 
us more than we can speak. Thou dost also transcend our utmost 
conception. All of thy name that we can frame into words is but 
little; and all of thee that we can frame into emotions is still but lit- 
tle; and all that we can conceive of thee by the imagination is yet 
but very little. Beyond our thoughts and feelings and conceptions 
thou dost stretch endlessly and boundlessly. We look toward thee 
as men look toward the morning. Thou art our Sun ; thou art our 
Light ; thou art our Life. In thee our life is hid. We do not under- 
stand the meaning of this; but our hearts are uplifted with gladness 
that we shall find its meaning to be so much more than that which is 
shadowed forth, though the shadow itself is transcendently better 
than all earthly joys and experiences. Be pleased, our Father, to 
show this more and more to us. Grant that we may learn more and 
more in life to live by being better. So draw us near to thee until 
there shall be that ear opened in the soul which can hear unutter- 
able things; until that sight shall be quickened which can see 
invisible things; and until that susceptibility to truth shall be 
aroused which can take in the higher and nobler elements of life, 
so that we can here feel the first tremulous touches of heavenly joy. 
And thus we shall go onward and upward until we shall stand in 
Zion and before God. And we will give the praise of our salvation 
to the Father, i he Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen, 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 









ST. PAUL'S CREED. 



44 Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; 
if there he any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things." 
—Phil, iv., 8. 






These were among the very last words that were penned 
by the Apostle Paul. He was in prison, and he wrote them 
with a manacled hand, chained to a soldier, rejoicing that 
even his bonds were blest, and that the heroism of his suffer- 
ing made many bold to speak the truth of Christ, even in 
the household of the despot who soon sought and took his 
life ; so that this light breaks out from the darkness of the 
dungeon. 

How Paul's last days were spent we know not. There was 
no decline by reason of sickness. The waste, the decay, we 
are spared an account of from him. He rises as a spirit burn- 
ing with the most noble sentiments, with the most heroic 
feelings, and with a life astonishing by its disinterestedness, 
by its fervor, by its wonderful success — a life which did not 
end with the falling of the body ; for he rose to a nobler 
sphere, to join in higher labors ; and the truths which he had 
uttered came on down through the generations which followed. 
There never have been any brighter scenes than those through 
which the apostle Paul passed ; and there has never been a man 
who, on so high a level of enthusiastic sentiment, has equaled 
or been fit to be likened to him. Aside from Christ, he i8 

Sunday Evening, January 25, 1874. "Lesson: Rev. v. Hymns (Plymouth Collec- 
tion) : Nos. 1154, 1251, 1353. 



438 8T. PAUL'S CREED. 

the one shining light of the New Testament dispensation, 
standing there as Moses stood in the Old Testament dispen- 
sation. Though the Jews, running far back in their thoughts 
toward antiquity, spoke evermore with veneration of the found- 
ers of their nation — Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob — and uot 
improperly ; yet all these great names are mere shadows. They 
have left no special memorial — no great truth which they 
bore and rounded out. They are landmarks very much as those 
stone-heap witnesses were, which the Israelites were accustomed 
to build on great occasions. Moses had a creative nature, and 
he left institutions and laws and methods which have made the 
world wiser and better to this day; but John and Paul are 
the two natures of the New Testament, who, inflamed by 
Jesus, were made to be significantly his great forces. John 
represents the interior and thoughtful and undemonstrative 
manhood ; but, if he be larger and nobler in some respects, 
yet, after all, his revelation to the world as an active force is 
not so great as that of Paul. John may be, in and of him- 
self, perhaps, deeper and higher ; but as a regenerating power, 
acting upon the world, Paul, who was made up of profound 
personal experience, with an intense practical nature, far 
transcends John in his sphere, in the width of it, and in its 
force. 

It is quite noticeable that he who has developed in modern 
times, on religious grounds, the doctrine of the sacredness of 
the individual man, or the doctrine of the nobility of man- 
hood, should himself have been brought up, I might almost 
say, a besotted Pharisee. A Pharisee is one who worships in- 
struments. Whoever believes that churches, or books, or 
institutions, or customs, are more valuable than men is a 
Pharisee ; and, on the othe.r hand, whoever believes that man 
is transcendently more valuable than his institutions is a 
Paulist — that is to say, he is a Ohristman, or Christian. Por 
this idea was borrowed by the apostle Paul from Jesus, who, 
never disdaining institutions, never disdaining the customs of 
his country, was adhered to enthusiastically by the common 
people, because he so well represented to them the noblest 
notion of a Jew. He was a servant to their sabbaths and 
synagogues and modes of worship ; and yet, after all, through 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 439 

his obedience to these things, there shone out in him, more and 
more to the end, the conception that the unit of value in the 
universe is living intelligence. Man makes society ; man 
fashions communities ; man frames institutions ; but his value 
does not depend upon what he does in the framing of institu- 
tions. He is not like a stone that goes into a wall, and helps 
to build a palace or a fort, and is good for nothing except as 
the fort or the palace is good. He is not like a brick, com- 
pressed, and made shapely, in order that it may be laid just 
so with line and trowel. He is a living being, in and of him- 
self ; and all society, all religion, all churches, all institutions, 
come as servants to him, who is the master of them, who is 
the one for whom they were created, and who is independent 
of them — or can be, or ought to be, if he is not. It is be- 
cause these things help a man to measure manliness, it is 
because they bring in their hand that which makes him 
broader and stronger and richer, that they are valuable to him ; 
and the moment they cease to do that he ceases to be amenable 
to them. 

Just as soon as this large conception of the liberty of 
manhood, of the liberty wherewith Christ makes men free, of 
the liberty which all men enter into when they are by the 
Divine Spirit brought into line, not in their lower animal na- 
ture, but in their reason, in their moral sentiments, and in 
that intuition which comes from the higher feelings — just as 
soon as this large conception of liberty takes possession of a 
man, and he lives according to it, he becomes free. For 
whatever things men are accustomed to do because the law 
says they shall, under the influence of this new conception 
they do because they like to do them. They act voluntarily. 
It is pleasanter for them to do right than to do wrong, just as 
it is pleasanter for a musician to make chords than to make 
discords. 

A man may rise to a plane where he speaks the truth be- 
cause • it is sweeter to speak the truth than to speak false- 
hood. A man may be honest because he feels .that honesty 
is intrinsically better to him than dishonesty. And so, in 
every place, that which men do by law and by rule, they 
come at last to do by volition. In the highest reach of which 



440 ST. PAUBS CREED. 

we have any notion upon earth, men do things involuntarily 
and automatically. 

Paul was one, then, who cared for nothing so much as for 
that ennobled manhood which is the result of the divine 
influence upon the human soul. The inflections in his writ- 
ings which dissuade from every form of evil, and exhort 
to every form of good, are simply marvelous. Men. have 
read those writings in order to frame theologies — and they 
have had business on hand to do that. It has been as- 
sumed, generally, that out of the New Testament decrees — 
at least so far as the whole will of God is concerned — you 
can frame the outlines of the divine government, of the 
divine attributes, and of the divine purposes, as well as the 
outcome of the divine economy in time. Men have supposed 
that from the New Testament should be extracted these great 
elements ; and they have been busy in attempting to mark 
them out ; whereas that which the New Testament is remark- 
able for, that which it has been to a veiy large extent recog- 
nized and employed as being, — is that it deals with the 
formation of a beautiful, noble manhood. Paul was the 
apostle of manhood, — manhood in Christ Jesus, — he being 
both the model and the inspiration. 

I need not stop to read you the many passages which 
abound everywhere touching this matter. 

Thus these developments have in them the method of 
making known the divine nature. Hitherto the revelation 
of God had been autocratic ; sometimes it had been despotic, 
supreme, sovereign, and terrible ; but in the New Testament, 
without losing sight of the fact that God is supreme and 
sovereign, the especial development is that of loveliness ; and 
the influence of the divine nature upon the soul, as shown 
forth in the New Testament, is to inspire it with all forms of 
manliness. In other words, it is for the sake of shaping men 
into divinity, and not for the sake of bringing them to wor- 
ship divinity, that God is revealed in the teachings of the 
New Testament, and especially in the writings of the Apostle 
Paul. In so far as the knowledge of God inspires reverence, 
reverence itself helps to build up the inward being, and to 
make man nobler ; and so far it is useful ; but the main con- 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 441 

ception of the divine nature found in the New Testament is 
that from the reflection of its power upon men they shall be- 
come nobles, priests, kings. You do not strike the apostolic 
line of vision, you do not get the view which the apostle had, 
from his stand-point, until you gain a conception of the di- 
vine nature which tends to inspire in men all confidence, all 
hope, all admiration, all trust, and every endeavor at imita- 
tion. 

The conception, therefore, of a God that is mighty, and 
afar off, the great Engineer and Architect, is not the New 
Testament conception. Although he is Engineer and Arch- 
itect, and although those laws which are irresistible and 
universal, and are moving through time and space, and 
shaping matter, are from him, yet there is just the same dif- 
ference between the interior disposition of God and this 
outward manifestation of power, that there is between a man 
showing physical strength and a man showing spiritual dis- 
positions. The New Testament conception of the disposition 
of God is distinctively that which makes him the chief among 
ten thousand, and altogether lovely — although that phrase it- 
self is one of those welcome fore-gleams of the later light, 
which shoot out here and there from the Old Testament. 

Men, in this point of view, according to the apostle, are 
of more importance than institutions. As it is declared by 
the Lord, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for 
the sabbath." The Bible was made for man, and not man 
for the Bible. The church was made for man, and not man 
for the church. The teacher was ordained for the sake of 
men, and not men for the sake of the teacher. All ordinances 
are to be helps and benefits to men, and not masters or rulers 
over them. These things were all designed, not to take away 
from but to enlarge and ennoble the individual. The whole 
drift of the New Testament is to make a man free by making 
him better ; by drawing him up in the only direction in which 
there is legitimate growth — toward the higher elements that 
are in his nature ; and when men come to power and man- 
hood in that direction they find themselves free from every- 
thing except the dominion of love — and that is the only 
bondage in this world which any man can afford to have. 



442 ST. PAUL'S CREED. 

The chains which love imposes are honors : all others are 
degradations. 

The whole tendency of the New Testament, then, is to 
inspire largeness of being, freedom of nature, independence 
of life, as fast as men can achieve it by broadening their 
powers and becoming good. All other things are instru- 
ments, and are ordained to be subject to man's choices. 

But is not a man obliged to keep Sunday ? It is better 
that a man should have one day in seven for rest, and that 
he should give to the household and to moral culture this 
portion of his time ; but is a man bound, under the apos- 
tolic injunction, to observe days, sabbaths, and new moons, 
or is he free ? 

He who can make manhood without instruments is per- 
fectly at liberty to make manhood without instruments. If 
a man would be pure, and truth-loving, and beautiful, and 
full of honor, and full of every scintillation of virtue, is he 
not bound to observe church economies ? No. May men be 
Christians outside of a church ? Would to God that they 
would be ! Well, if a man becomes a Christian outside of a 
church must he not come into it ? If he wishes to — not 
otherwise. 

We think it a well-established fact, that if a man does go 
to school it will be easier for him to learn ; but if he chooses 
to learn outside of the school he is at liberty to do it. We 
want him to have intelligence ; and we point out to him 
the ways in which he may obtain it ; and undoubtedly they 
are the best ways for the community at large ; but nobody 
is obliged, because he wishes education, to go first to the 
common school, and then to the academy, and then to the 
college, and then to the professional school. A man may 
possibly be a practical physician without ever having gone 
into any school. A man can, perhaps, be an able and effi- 
cient lawyer without having studied law under an experi- 
enced lawyer in an office. A man can be a successful mer- 
chant without having had instruction in a counting-house ; 
though none of these possibilities are probable. Such places 
for training are convenient and desirable, and men are to be 
urged to go through them, because the presumption, drawn 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 443 

from experience, is against his succeeding without them ; but 
if any man can prosper without them he is under no obliga- 
tion to avail himself of them. 

It is a great help for a man who is sick or weak to carry a 
staff ; but when he gets well or strong it is not necessary for 
him to carry a staff. If a man can go without crutches, let 
him not despise them ; and if a man is obliged to carry 
crutches, (as most of us are !) let him not blame the man for 
not carrying them who does not need them. 

In regard to ordinances, those from which you can ab- 
stract benefit, those which do you good, observe. If ordi- 
nances come to you and say, " What can we do for you ?" 
and you see nothing that they can do for you, they retire. 
They are not obligatory on you. No ecclesiastical regulation, 
no church ordination, no system of days, no philosophy of 
religion, has power to bind a man that has been made free, or 
that is seeking to be made free, by the action of the Holy 
Ghost upon his soul ; by the inflammation of that which is 
highest and best in him ; for he is God's son, and therefore 
he has the freedom of the universe, and is in bondage to 
none. In Christ " there is neither Greek nor Jew, circum- 
cision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor 
free." And ordinances are as nothing unless they serve the 
weaknesses of men. If a man can get along without them 
better than with them he is at liberty to do it ; but in dis- 
pensing with them he is not to despise religion ; for religion 
does not consist in being a member of a church, or reciting 
the catechism, or repeating so much Scripture : it is a living 
quality in the living man. It is the right exercise of right 
feelings all the time, toward God and toward men. 

I do not say this because I wish to take away from you the 
thought of the great advantage of church economies. I value 
them. So do I value the friendly intercourse of my neigh- 
bors, whom I love. I go into their houses with great pleas- 
ure. But suppose there should be an ordinance passed that, 
once a week, I must visit A, B, and C, or suffer a penalty ? 
It would take away all the charm of visiting them ; and I 
would say, " I won't !" I go to see them because I am bene- 
fited by going, and not because I am obliged to go ; and I 



444 ST. PAUL'S CREED. 

will.go just as long as I am benefited, because I desire to, and 
not from any exterior compulsion. 

Now I believe that churches do good to men — they ought 
to, at any rate. Why ? Simply because all feelings tend to 
strengthen themselves by coming together. Whenever men 
wish to act with the greatest facility and effect in the line of 
art, they coalesce, and form a stream of influences. In poli- 
tics, men combine, and mighty influences are developed by 
combination. In friendships, in all the relations of man with 
man, it is the coalescence of feeling that deepens the channel, 
and widens the river, and increases the on -flow. And in reli- 
gion it is precisely the same. It is easier for men to fire 
themselves with sacred enthusiasm together than separate. 
One man trying to be enthusiastic alone is like one stick of 
wood trying to burn alone ; two men are like two sticks of 
wood ; three are like three ; and four will burn in spite of 
you. When men come together they kindle each other ; and 
that is good enough reason why they should come together. 
You come together, not because you must, but because you 
think it best. 

And so it should be in churches, though in many churches 
it is not so. Often when men go into a church they find a 
great many rules and regulations, a great many prohibitions 
and permissions, a great many restraints of their freedom. 
They find everything arranged and fixed. They find a great 
many things that have been handed down from antiquity. 
They find a great many duties and obligations imposed upon 
them. They find themselves under the dominion of systems 
and economies. They find themselves tied up in many ways. 
It is said to them, Ci You must not do this, and you must do 
that ; you must not go here, and you may go there ; you are 
responsible for these things and for those." The church, as 
it is often administered, is webbed by various provisions which 
take away the liberty of the individual. It does all his think- 
ing for him, and arranges all his religious work for him. It 
tells him what he shall do in every hour of the day. It takes 
away the autonomy and spontaneity of his nature. It re- 
lieves him of the responsibility of developing his own thoughts 
and feelings, and of taking care of his own life. In other 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 445 

words, it makes spiritual eunuchs of men, divesting them 
of their vital manhood. Under such circumstances it is not 
a benefit. 

I have a receipt. The world has been going wrong all the 
time, and men have been thieves, and debauchees, and 
drunkards ; and I know how I am going to sto}:> it. I am 
going to put tip enormous buildings, full of cells ; and 1 am 
going to take every man, and place him in one of those cells, 
and turn the key on him, so that he cannot get out. Then 
he will not have anything to drink or to steal ; there will be 
no one for him to harm ; he will not be able to do any mis- 
chief. In that way I will reform the whole community. 
When they are shut up so that they cannot do anything, how 
harmless they will be ! — and how worthless ! 

The supreme conception of manhood is that of a vital 
spirit, full of voluntary action ; full of unrestrained will ; full 
of thought, flying high and free as the winds fly, and profuse 
as the flowers of spring. God's spirit developes a thousand 
times more bountifully from the human soil than the sun 
does from the natural soil, all vines, all shrubs, all high- 
growing trees, all lowly plants, grass, moss, everything in its 
place, and of its kind. 

Now, it is this multifarious spontaneity in man that con- 
stitutes the grandeur of manhood ; and it is this spontaneity 
that men try to repress by institutions, by denominations, by 
sects, by authority in its different forms, hewing off the 
branches here and there. But liberty is one of the signs of 
Christianity ; by as much as a man is a craven, and trembles 
before his priest, by so much is he less a Christian. By as 
much as a man is superstitious about Sundays, about ordi- 
nances, about forms and ceremonies, by so much is his 
Christian character weakened. He that loves God until he 
fears nothing is the typical Christian— the ideal man ; and 
out of him proceed all kindness, all truth, all love, all faith, 
all self-respect, all needful restraint, all things that go to 
make him a full man, moving in the ranks of society easily 
and naturally. 

Now, what men attempt to do by the pressure of customs, 
by the methods of absolute authority, that the apostle under- 



446 ST. PAUL'S CREED. 

stood perfectly well could be better done by our being men in 
Christ Jesus. 

"When I was in Washington the other day, I went into the 
National Conservatory; and there I saw all tropical plants 
strong and growing. For instance, I saw canes, that, spring- 
ing from the ground, had run up to the very glass. I climbed 
the winding stairs in the center, and found that as soon as 
the trees had reached to a certain height they could not go 
any further. Why ? Because the Conservatory must be pre- 
served, and the trees had to be cut back, lest they should 
break the glass. In order to save the Conservatory they 
were obliged to crop in the trees. 

It is very much so with churches. They let men grow 
according to the limits of the conservatory. When a man 
has grown so tall that the glass is in danger, they cut him in. 
But God's conception is that men shall grow with a free soil, 
and with free air, to the uttermost limit and bound. Ac- 
cording to God's conception, in freedom there is safety, and 
in freedom there is the only true conservatism, and the only 
perfect manhood. 

You will perhaps ask me when I am coming to my text. 
That is the last thing I am coming to in this discourse. 

I remark once more, that religion is not to be considered 
as comprised in its formulas and in its instruments. Ke- 
ligion is only another name for certain states and conditions 
of living human intelligence. „ 

I have on my shelves Lindley's Vegetable Kingdom. Do 
you suppose, because I have in that one volume an account of 
all known trees and vegetables, that I have those trees and 
vegetables themselves in my book-case ? I have a book which 
points to them ; but it does not contain them. And do you 
suppose that religion is in the New Testament, or in any cat- 
echism, or in any confession of faith ? These things contain 
words that point to religion ; but the thing itself is outside 
of books. If it is any where, it is in men. It never can be 
compressed into a formula. Although you can describe a 
tree, no description is the tree ; and religion cannot be com- 
pressed into a description. It is a development in the human 
soul. No formula can do more than point to it. It must be 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 447 

searched for outside of the formula. That to which all doc- 
trines and all teachings refer must he looked for in the Hying 
realities of life. 

Again, I remark that the new views which arise in the prog- 
ress of civilization, in the development of scientific knowl- 
edge, in the refinement of life, in the advancement of liberty, 
are to be considered neither as outside of Christianity, nor as 
antagonistic to it. I strike at that most miserable and 
wretched fallacy, that Christianity is a letter, or that it is a 
book, or that it is a system of doctrines. I say that Christian- 
ity is manhood developed by the divine Spirit to its utter- 
most bounds, for the life that now is, and for the life that is 
to come ; and I aver that whatever belongs to man acting 
in normal relations, whatever, in subsequent times, may come, 
of knowledge, of will, of development, of beauty, of skill, of 
rare modes of life, is an element of Christianity. 

Eead, now, our text, in the light of these remarks : 

"Brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honest, -whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, what- 
soever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if 
there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." 

So, then, I boldly say that I hail the thinkers of every 
school of philosophy who are making progress in the develop- 
ment of truth. Let men search for hidden records — for the 
footsteps of God on the globe. Let men make discoveries in 
the stellar depths. Let men develop new economies and phil- 
osophies. Let men open up other realms of knowledge. Let 
whatever there may be in the sphere of human society be dis- 
closed. It does not follow that it is not in harmony with re- 
ligion because it is not a part of that which is hereditary and 
conventional. Christianity in its nature is interminable, uni- 
versal, unfathomable. There is no end to it. No man can 
express it in books of prose or verse. No man can give the 
statistics of it. Whatever expansion the human soul is capa- 
ble of ; whatever may be done in the household that is more 
beautiful ; whatever may take place in the. State that is more 
noble — that belongs to Christianity, which is sanctified, di- 
vine manhood in men. There is no antagonism between re- 
ligion and the discoveries that are being made, so far as they 



448 ST. PAUL'S CREED, 

are true developments. Whatever elements go to make men 
deeper, higher, wider ; whatever enlarges man's horizon ; 
whatever makes him an heir of two worlds, and worthy to be 
made a king, not by an outward crown, but by a crown of the 
heart ; whatever makes him more like God, and more deserv- 
ing of the love of God — all of that belongs to Christianity; 
and the unexpressed part of Christianity is a thousand times 
more than that which has been expressed. Christianity is 
the alphabet, and life is the literature which springs from 
that alphabet. 

Many of the fears of men, therefore, are groundless, in 
regard to the results of scientific investigation. Men say, 
" If you develop this or that doctrine original sin will go 
under/' I would to God that it might ! "If you develop 
Darwinism, or Herbert Spencerism, or the system of this, 
that, or the other school, where is your faith ?" Any faith 
that can be upset by two men, or by twenty, I do not want 
nor care for. Nothing can undermine Christianity if it 
♦means the development of humanity, and such a love of God 
in Christ Jesus as shall draw all hearts toward the truth, and 
govern the animalism .in them, and awaken their higher 
sentiments, and make the household more noble and beauti- 
ful, and make the state grander for peace, equity, liberty. 

Everything that tends to enlarge manhood in man, as a 
child of God, and not as his own God, or as God in himself, 
I hail ; and although modern discoveries and developments 
may put on the guises of opposition or dissent, although 
they may even style themselves infidel, I see that under a 
kindly providence they are all working for good ; and I re- 
joice in them. Though I highly value the direct efforts which 
are made to lead men to repent of evil and forsake it, and 
take hold of virtue and a high spiritual life ; though I con- 
ceive that work to be the noblest and the richest and highest 
of earthly employments ; though I believe that a true, whole- 
hearted, and joyous following of what we now call a religious 
life is the highest plane of earthly spiritual experience; yet 
T discern that in the times to come whatsoever is just, what- 
soever is pure, whatsoever is of good report, whatsoever 
men instinctively believe to be noble, and honorable, and 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 449 

true, and right, will be recognized as belonging to Chris- 
tianity. 

And so, when the last times, the teleologic period, shall 
come, then He that shall descend and come will not come 
in any ecclesiastical guise. The priest that looks for Christ's 
coming, when the new earth and the new heaven shall ap- 
pear, will not alone see him. The orator will see him ; the 
artist will see him ; the singer will see him ; the mechanic, 
working on fine things for fine purposes, will see him. There 
will be, in the descent of Christ, when we take in the full 
scope of his nature, something that will represent the best 
things of all sides of the human mind ; of all sides of the 
human economy ; of all sides of human society ; and the new 
heaven and the new earth will be a realm in which man, 
being a son of man no longer, shall strike upward, and rise 
until he is the king's son — and God in love is only King. 

May God give to us this largeness of thought, this liberty, 
this aspiration, this intuition, until' we reach the land where 
even intuition shall be lost, and where we shall be inspired, 
by the spirit in us and about us, with blessed fruition and 
joy, forever and forever ! 



450 8T. PAUL'S CREED. 



PEAYEE BEFORE THE SEEMOK 

We bless thee, our Father, that thou hast drawn us toward thyself 
with growing knowledge; that we are not left in the low estate in 
which we were born, but that thou hast, by thine influence, lifted 
upon us more and more the rising light. Thou art the All-governing; 
and thou art more—thou art He that is forming and educating the 
race; and still thou art more — thou art the Redeemer of men, and 
art bringing them to virtue out of their sin and transgression, by fear 
and by hope; and yet thou art more— thou art our Father; and all 
that is dear and trusting in the world belongs to thee. Thou art our 
personal Friend, and no other friend is like unto thee; none so per- 
fectly understands; none so enters into every want, and beholds our 
infirmity and sin, and waits with such infinite patience, with such 
brotherly kindness, and with such ail-healing love, as thou dost. 
Thou art the soul's Medicine. Thou art He that loves to save; and 
thou art perpetually healing men by the power of thy sympathy, and 
by the outflow of thy goodness, and asking to be admitted more and 
more into hearts that seem barren; but thou comest into barren 
hearts, even as the rain comes upon barren sands, to bring fruits and 
flowers ; and thou dost rejoice more than the husbandman from whose 
labor springs an abundant harvest. We rejoice that thou art, above 
all others, the One that is ever wakeful, ever laborious, ever care- 
taking, ever burden-bearing, enduring to the very end; and that there 
are none who do not rest more than thou dost. We rejoice though we 
cannot compass the conception of thy being nor the thought of such 
things as thou art doing, nor reach up unto thee. We look in the 
direction in which thou art supreme in government and in love, and 
rejoice as we draw nearer and nearer to thy nature, so that it breaks 
upon us with more and more intelligence, and with better and better 
refreshment of soul. 

Now, O Lord, we pray, not so much for the forgiveness of our sins, 
as for the supply of those things for which we need to implead thee. 
We pray not so much for the bounties of Providence, as if only upon 
petition thou wouldst give forth the morning sun and the blessings of 
every hour, as for inward mercies. We do beseech of thee that thy 
goodness may at last so ripen love and gratitude in us that we shall 
be somewhat worthy of thy companionship, and shall not walk in 
continual humiliation; in continual thought of our selfishness and 
waywardness and worldliness. 

Grant, O Lord, that we may have, if not the assurance of king- 
ship, yet some of its tokens. We are the sons of God. It doth not 
yet appear what we shall be ; we walk in disguise ; yet grant that 
there may be some such sense of our nearness to thee, and some such 
sense of our relationships to thy thorough love, that our hearts shall 
grow strong and glad, and that our lives shall overflow with bounteous 
and willing service to thee through our fellow-men. For how can we 
reach thee? What song of ours can be heard beneath the musical 
roll of those who sing around about thy throne in the heavenly land ? 
Who of us can give thee anything, from whom comes all bounty? 
What thought can servo thee ? What affection can bo as incense unto 



ST. PAUL'S CREED. 451 

thee ? But we can serve thee by loving one another, by exercising 
patience with each other ; by forgiving one anotber ; by bearing and 
forbearing ; by being to each other as Christ is to us. So may we 
serve thee. 

We bless thy name, O Jesus, that thou hast been pleased to say, 
Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me. 
Though we cannot reach to the height of thy glory to do anything 
for thee, nor to place upon thy head any crown, we rejoice to believe 
that all the thiugs which we do to benefit our fellow mea around 
about us upon earth are accepted at thine hand as if they were done to 
thee. We beseech of thee that more and more thou wilt make us to 
feel it. We do feel it ; for who can bless us as much as they who bless 
our friends ? Who can grant us any favor like that which they grant 
who succor our children or our dearly beloved ones ? 

And now, we thank thee for the mercies of this day; for the 
privilege and the pleasure of the sanctuary. We pray that we may 
be guided through all the way upon which we have entered, by thy 
providence, and by thy personal presence, that we may have that 
peace which passeth all understanding ; that we may dwell as beneath 
the shadow of thy wing, where no storm shall rise to reach us; and 
that we may abide in the strength of the Father. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon all who 
have come up hither to-night. Look thou into their hearts. Bring 
peace to those who are troubled, and strength to those who are 
weak, and hope to those who are discouraged. We beseech of thee 
that thou wilt give to every one succor according to his need, and 
according to thine understanding of that need. 

And so wilt thou deal graciously and bountifully with thy servants 
every one. If there be those in thy presence who have not been 
accustomed to draw the joy of their life from thy life ; if there be 
those who have had tokens of thy presence, and yet have not recog- 
nized nor known thee, we pray that their eyes may be opened, that 
their hearts may be made sensitive to the divine presence, and that 
they may find in the newness of life strength and gladness such as 
has never yet visited them. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all whom we love — upon 
our friends everywhere ; upon those whom we have worked with in 
the Gospel; upon all those who need our supplications; upon the poor 
and the outcast. We pray for those whom men forget, or remember 
only to punish ; we pray for the vicious ; we pray for those who are 
bound to crime ; and we beseech of thee that they may all find rescue. 
May there be saviors raised up even for those who have gone to the 
uttermost from virtue and from truth. And let that kingdom 
speedily come from which shall be banished wrath, and hatred, and 
all malice — that kingdom in which dwelleth peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost. 

And to thy name, Father, Son and Spirit, shall be the praise for- 
ever. Amen, 



452 ST. PAUL'S CREED. 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Grant unto us, our Heavenly Father, the light of thy truth more 
and more perfectly, that we may understand the largeness of thy 
revelation, and thy purpose in men ; that we may rejoice not in the 
limitations of a poorly interpreted letter, but in the largeness of the 
Spirit. Grant, we pray thee, that we may he delivered from servile 
fear; from all chains which we wear because we think we must, 
though they do not help us. Grant that we may know how to break 
away from the bondage of conventions that bind without benefiting. 

We pray that we may learn to live so that our labor shall not be a 
stumbling-block to others ; so that in the royalty of intelligence, and 
yet in the gentleness of motherly affection, we may know how to 
possess our full strength and knowledge, and take care of the weak as 
tender babes, and rear them to the fullness of knowledge which shall 
enable them to be as we are. So may we learn, in this new school, in 
this divine court of love, all wisdom, all justice, all truth, all practical 
life ; and when we have finished that part of our education which be- 
longs to this world, be pleased, O thou Lover that lovest us more 
than we love ourselves, to take us to thyself, where we shall see thee 
as thou art, and rejoice and be satisfied because we shall be like thee. 

And to thy name shall be the praise forever and ever. Amen. 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 



It is expedient for you that I go away." — Jno. xvi., 7. 



The last scenes of our Lord upon earth defy exposition. 
His own soul rose so manifestly into the higher realm ; 
his presentation of truth became so ethereal ; it was so far 
above the level of interpretation, that it is extremely difficult 
to follow his discourses, which seem enigmatical, mystical, 
and, from their very brightness, obscure. There is no part 
of the closing history of the Saviour's life that is more won- 
derful than the record which John makes of his last inter- 
views with his disciples. All those clustering chapters of 
John — the 15th, the 16th, the 17th, and on — were a part of 
the great event of the Supper. They were the conversations 
which took place at the time of the Supper, and in intimate 
connection with it. They are full of what may be called a love- 
lore, such as is to be found in no other literature, and such as 
refuses to be interpreted by the ordinary love-literature of hu- 
man society. Such love, so high, so full of divine intellection, 
so full of spiritual impulse, so full of regrets tempered by a 
better knowledge, so full of aspiration, so full of faith, so 
tender, so gentle, touching the human soul on all sides so 
potently — I know not where we shall look for anything, till 
we hear it from the lips of God in heaven, that can be com- 
pared with it as it is represented in those chapters in John — 
chapters which have this trouble : that they are like fruit- 
trees which grow so high that children, stepping under them, 

Sunday Morning, February 1, 1874. Lesson : Heb. xi. 1-3 ; 17-40. Hymns (Plym- 
outh Collection) : Nos. 31, 668, 1230. 



456 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

can only take windfalls, being unabJe to reach up into the 
boughs, where the fruit is ripest, and where the sun has given 
it its best colors. Men are so small, and the tree is so high, 
that it is only through the medium of higher forms of expe- 
rience, which are not given to all, and which are seldom 
vouchsafed to any, that one can enter into these discourses 
and interpret them. I confess that I am stopped in a labor 
of love, in attempting to unfold the Life of Chrisfc. I have 
come to the verge of what are called "the forty days"; and 
the mountains are so high and so dazzling that I hardly know 
how to climb them, or what to do with them. They reach far 
above any power that I have ; and so I wait, and hope. 

It was in one of these conversations that the Saviour de- 
clared to his disciples that he must leave them. On him their 
whole souls had rested. He epitomized to them everything 
that was sacred; they had forsaken occupation and had suf- 
fered contumely for following this man, and now he was 
about to be taken from them ; and everything in their knowl- 
edge, everything in their affection, everything in their under- 
standing, rebelled against it. They could not comprehend it 
either in its relations to him or to themselves. And yet he 
said, "It is expedient for you [it is for your own interest, it 
is for your own good] that I go away." 

That, I think, touches the universal feeling of wonder in 
men. Is there one of you who has not, at one time or anoth- 
er, pondered the question, " Why did Christ leave the world? 
Having once come into it, and brought life and immortality 
to light, why did he not, in the exercise of infinite divinity, 
abide in the world ?" Although it may be a vague feeling, 
coming and going, yet, at one time and another, persons spell 
out good reasons— reasons that are to themselves good — why 
he should have remained. 

There are multitudes who think that if they could but 
once have seen Jesus with their eyes ; or that if, like Thomas, 
they could have laid their hand on his hand ; or that if they 
could have heard from him the history of his life and the 
repetition of his instructions, and could have brought away 
with them from one single visit this sanctified vision, it would 
have made a difference with them as long as they lived, that 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 457 

it would have begotten in them a certainty, an enthusiasm, 
and a power which would have carried them through a thou- 
sand sloughs that otherwise must have engulfed them. 

Then, again, men think that if once they could learn to 
pour out their soul's allegiance to Christ, in his very presence, 
it would change the tenor of their whole lives. They think 
that if they could once express their feelings in person, the 
channel of their souls would be filled up, and they could go 
on all their lives long worshiping and rejoicing in Him to 
whom they had yielded personal allegiance. They think that 
if they could erect in their souls a conception of G-od in Christ, 
and prostrate their will and affection before it, having seen 
the substantial Reality, and having pledged their fealty and 
fidelity to him, this experience would be an anchor that would 
never give way. They think it would lay the foundations of 
piety so strong that all doubts and skepticisms would flee 
from them forever more. And that will not strike you at 
first as irrational. 

Then there is a larger number of persons who feel that if 
Christ were only alive, enthroned in Jerusalem, around that 
sacred Center where he would dwell would be formed the 
church circle in an unbroken unity ; that all the shattered 
particles of shining truth would be gathered together ; that 
those causes by which the truth is broken and rendered frag- 
mentary would be avoided ; that the world would grow up into 
substantial oneness ; that there would be no sects ; that all 
would be Christ's men ; and that there would be no divisions 
among them. 

Then, again, there is the feeling of certainty which men 
seek for. There is a desire among men to know the truth, 
and to know it exactly, without variableness or shadow of 
turning. This universal desire leads men to feel that if they 
could have a determiner of controversies, it would be a great 
and desirable thing. "Yes," they say, "we have the Bible; 
but then, what is the Bible ? It is a forest of glorious trees 
out of which men have cut sticks and bludgeons for handles 
of all manner of implements with which to fight each other. 
Instead of there being a determiner of controversies, to whom 
men apply for the settlement of their difficulties, we see men 



458 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

of equal wisdom and scholarship and piety separated and di- 
vided on almost every single question. How can the Bible 
be a determiner of controversies, when, instead of one church 
being built out of it, there are a dozen different and warring 
sects that draw their proofs from ifc, and justify their opera- 
tions by reference to it ?" 

There is the vicegerent in Kome ; and men say, often- 
times, "We do not believe in a great many things that are 
claimed in regard to Roman papacy ; but, after all, it is a 
good thing to have somewhere a center of faith — one that can 
determine and put an end to controversies. It is eminently 
desirable. And if men receive the truth from one who 
knows it in all its relations there is nothing to hinder there 
being unity of faith and belief — a consummation devoutly to 
be wished." 

I think so too, in the way in which the Master spoke of 
it; but not in the lower way in which men speak of it. Unity 
according to the Gospel idea is very desirable ; but one of the 
most mischievous things that could have been done would 
have been to introduce into this world an economy so revolu- 
tionary and so different from the original decrees and designs 
of God as that would be which should point out all the paths 
of duty, all the lines of industry, and all the elements of be- 
lief, and mold them, and present them to men, like so many 
cakes standing in a baker's shop, so that they could go in and 
take this truth, or that truth, and find it all ready for them, 
they having nothing to do but to eat it, and go home and be 
happy. 

This great unity of the church, this absolute identity of 
beliefs, of which we hear so much — men follow ifc, and think 
that if Christ himself, not a man, but divine, in his own per- 
son, had remained in Jerusalem, so that every time a doubt 
arose, a letter might be sent thither and an answer received 
solving that doubt, or so that when a doctrine came up which 
could not be fathomed an inquiry could be despatched and 
an exact reply returned — if there could be a tribunal that 
should be a kind of encyclopedia in church matters and mat- 
ters of doctrine — it would settle everything. They think it 
would unitize men and the church. 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 459 

And so, for these and many other reasons, it is thought 
that if Christ had remained en earth his presence would have 
been an immense gain to the world, and men marvel that he 
should have gone out of it. 

I cannot deny that, at the first blush, there is some sort 
of justification for these vagrant fancies ; but they will not 
bear examination. God's way is always the best. It is best 
for the world that Christ left it. It was best for his disciples. 
It was best for his church. It has been best for the race. 
Let us consider it, — and first in its simplest and most obvious 
elements. 

If the Saviour had remained, say, at Jerusalem, either 
there would have been a perpetual miracle of youth, or else by 
growth he would have reached a monstrous and unnatural 
age. If he had lived on the earth two thousand years, he 
would have been so utterly unlike men that he would have 
grown away from them ; and the very supposition contains in 
it an element which explodes it, for then he could not be to 
us what he was to his disciples. 

Moreover, consider that had he abode upon earth he would 
have been subject to all the limitations and infirmities of the 
body. That is to say, he must needs have eaten, and drank, 
and slept, as men eat and drink and sleep. He must have 
traveled, as men travel, by instruments. Hourc, periods of 
time, must have had dominion over him. He would have 
dwelt in what, to him, would have been a prison — for he laid 
aside the glory which he had with the Father, he emptied 
himself of his reputation, he became as a man, that he might 
do a specific work in this world. And for him to have re- 
mained a man would have been to remain in an infant condi- 
tion, as it were, hindered, cramped on every side, as he was in 
Jerusalem, subject to hunger and thirst, subject to disease, 
subject to captivity, subject to the ten thousand adverse ele- 
ments which belong to the lot of humanity. Would it be 
best that the Head of the church should be thus imprisoned ? 
You might make Jerusalem as gorgeous as you pleased, you 
might make the mountains surrounding it of layers of gold, 
you might defend it by armies which should defy the ap- 
proach of all enemies ; but it would not be a fit residence for 



460 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

the risen Christ. The divine Spirit cannot dwell in a human 
body, nor under the laws of matter, except as in prison, and 
manacled. The idea of Christ's taking up his abode perma- 
nently on this earth is to me a most humiliating concep- 
tion. 

Further than that, suppose our Master had remained upon 
earth, abiding in Jerusalem. You plead the benefit that 
would have been derived from seeing him. How many of the 
race could have seen him? He would still have been uuseen 
by far the greatest number of men. The ocean may know 
ways of circulating its waters ; the Gulf Stream may find the 
poles, which no man can find, and flow back again, and in- 
cessantly move ; the atmosphere may change and go from 
place to place without vehicle or expense ; but there is no 
grand current by which the human race may be thus carried 
hither and thither. So the tribes of the earth would find it 
difficult to go to a certain place and see the Saviour if he were 
on earth. Moreover, the mere social and physical disturb- 
ances would be enormous. The entire customs of society, the 
industries of men, and national life in every part of the world, 
would necessarily be totally different if they were to undertake 
such a thing. As things are, it would break up the house- 
hold, destroy social intercourse, and subject men to untold 
perils and toils and wastes and expenses. The simplest at- 
tempt to see the Christ under such circumstances would bur- 
den men beyond all computation, to say nothing of the de- 
struction of vast multitudes of the human race — witness those 
fearful pilgrimages in the East, to this day, whose fatal re- 
sults, in famines, slaughters, and the dreaded Asiatic cholera, 
scourge the earth. 

But let us rise above these wretched considerations of 
man's physical circumstances, and go higher. Do you sup- 
pose, for a single moment, that you would feel any better 
satisfied if you had seen Christ than you may feel without hav- 
ing seen him ? Do you suppose your spiritual life would be 
unfolded through the eyes as effectually as it is through your 
understanding and imagination ? There is no greater illu- 
sion than the supposition that if you could once see God and 
heaven, the power of that which would come to you through 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST 461 

the eye would be greater than the power of that which comes 
to you through reason or faith. 

Was it so ? When the disciples were with Christ day by 
day, and night after night, were they more strong and more 
powerful than afterwards they were ? You know they were 
not. The inspiration that lifted them above common humanity 
came by faith and not by sight. So long as they lived by 
seeing they lived on a low plane. When they could no longer 
see, when they were put upon the necessity of imagining, 
when they began to live toward the invisible realm, then they 
rose, and then came to pass the promise, that the Spirit, the 
Comforter, should be given to them. Then there broke an il- 
lumining inspiration upon their souls. Then they became 
more than ordinary men. But it was not by the power of 
vision ; it was by the power of moral intuition ; it was by 
faith. 

It may be said that their faith was derived from the fact 
that they had onoe seen Christ ; and there can be no question 
that once having seen Christ worked with them to a certain 
degree ; but there is little doubt that that which was the real 
power of their ministry was not the reminiscence of a direct in- 
spiration of the Saviour when he was on earth. The sight of 
Christ did not do for the apostles what his absence did. His 
presence was sweet when they had it ; but his absenc,e was far 
better for them than his presence. Sense is the antithesis of 
sentiment. Spirituality is never derived from vision. The 
higher spiritual growths in men are produced by other means. 
The materialist, the atheist, in science, would have it all his 
own way, if we insisted that every spiritual influence came 
through the senses ; but if we deny that, and say that there 
is given to men interiorly a moral constitution which is illu- 
mined by the direct influence of the divine soul acting on 
ours, then the scientist, if he be atheist and materialist, does 
not have it all his own way. There are realms of knowledge 
which cannot be reached by vision, and which must be 
reached by the spirit. Therefore the Saviour says to his dis- 
ciples, " It is expedient that I go away ; if I go not away the 
Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send 
him unto you." There is a Holy Ghost — that is, a Holy 



462 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

Spirit — that is, the Divine Nature in a spiritual form — which 
rests upon the corresponding moral nature in map, and by 
which we are developed toward the highest stature ; and that 
does not come by seeing. Christ said, l * If I remain with you 
you will be helpless, you will be dependent on me, and you 
will rise no higher than your eyes can carry you ; but if ] 
leave you, then the Spirit of God, that has in it all light and 
all interpretations of noble thoughts, shall come, and new de- 
velopments will take place, and you will be lifted to a higher 
sphere, and will rest upon a higher place. It was for their 
good, then, that he left them. 

But again, would there be any more certainty of unity in 
government and polity if Christ could yet be referred to ? 
What is the obvious problem of human life ? Is it designed 
that men shall be brought into this world as nearly correct as 
possible, and grow more and more symmetrical clear through 
to the end, and be slid out naturally into their proper places 
in the other life ? If so, it contradicts every fact in history, 
and all facts that are extant. For see how men are tumbled 
into the world like so much gravel-stone and soil. See how 
they come into life inchoate, unformed, unknowing. Men 
begin at the lowest point. They develop slowly, imperfectly, 
little by little, each individual rising through certain stages 
adapted to himself. And the idea of a man's coming into life 
perfectly formed, and then going on without accident or mis- 
take to the end, is, as representing the structural genius of the 
world, preposterous. There is hardly a fact in the history of 
men that would goto corroborate such an idea. Men are born 
low down in the scale of being. They are born with imperfect 
knowledge. If they would obtain knowledge they must gain 
it by searching ; by seeking ; by taking responsibility upon 
themselves ; by the exertion of their faculties. But if all 
knowledge were prepared so that it could be put upon a man, 
where would be the chance for exertion on his part to obtain 
it? Men earn caution and wisdom ; but if these qualities 
were inherent in them, what motive would there be to earn 
them ? If men were made as the potter makes a vessel, giving 
it a certain shape, and baking it, so that its form cannot be 
changed, and so that its size is fixed in such a way that if it 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 463 

is a pint it will be a pint forever, or if it is a quart it will be a 
quart forever — if men were made and molded so, bow could 
there be any stimulus brought to bear upon them for en- 
deavor ? 

The fact is, men are made at zero, and by a process of 
self -development, by reason of their condition and their neces- 
sities, they unfold their characters. It is more or less the 
stimulus brought to bear, in the providence of God, through 
their wants, that lifts them up. 

You would like it if a house were built for you before you 
were born. You would like it if, when you came into the 
world, you found shoes ready made for you ; if you found 
coats hanging and waiting for you ; if you found tables ready 
to slide in or to rise up through the floor, covered with all 
manner of delicious food, and surrounded by airy servitors. 
And what would you do ? Oh, nothing ! And what is a man 
who does nothing in this world ? A man who does not cry 
with pain, who does not strive to avoid it, who does not aspire, 
and who does not work ; a man who is not plied on every 
hand with motives for the exercise of all his faculties in the 
development of himself — such a man is not the man God 
meant to produce in this world. He is not the ideal man of 
divine providence. This world is a world of anvils, of benches, 
of plows, of looms, of everything which indicates that men 
must work out their own salvation; and WOKK ! may be 
said to be the birth-cry of creation to every man that comes 
into the world. 

Now, there are men who are attempting to set up an ideal 
perfection which thwarts the divine intention. They say, 
"If we only had some one in Jerusalem who had authority,* 
and who should be supreme over the church throughout the 
world, saying, ( This is the exact way — walk ye in it,' how much 
better it would be !" Well, how much better would it be ? 
Would it be any better ? Why, we do not want unity in any 
such sense as that would imply — that is to say, we do not 
want mere likeness, mere sameness, mere absence of conflict. 
I tell you, we have that ; we have men who never quarrel ; we 
have men who always keep their places — in the graveyard ; 
and the race would be but little better than dead men if sucli 



464 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

unity were to exist, and men did not need to think, to exert 
themselves, or to make mistakes, which are always incident to 
investigation and endeavor. 

Some people are all the time trying to set aside the divine 
providence by doing for a man what it was designed that he 
should do for himself. They think that if we had a church 
that would take care of a man, so that he would not have to 
take care of himself ; if we had a church which every- 
body would have to come into first or last, that had just so 
many Articles, just so long, and in just such sequence, so that 
all would know just what rules they had to follow, and would 
find their thoughts and beliefs and lives arranged for them, 
and put in regular order — they think that if we had such a 
church, it would be a glorious thing. But what would a 
man be if we had such a church ? He would be about equal 
to Babbage's calculating machine, so that all that would be 
necessary would be to turn a crank, the wheels being of just 
such a diameter, and with just such cogs, but having no voli- 
tion, no life, no automatic action, no individuality, — no 
divinity ! 

Now, although selfishness is a sin, self ness is a virtue ; 
and the divine providence is steadily seeking to work out the 
individual power of manhood by voluntary choices, and by 
the endeavors and labors of each man. 

There is an idea that a great central authority at Jerusa- 
lem would have converted this world into a vast machine 
entirely harmonious with itself, and in perfect unity. Yes, 
oh yes, I can enter into the conception of it ; but I cannot 
conceive how anybody who has an idea of how the providence 
of God is unfolding and has unfolded the world should stum- 
ble on that as the way in which he ought to unfold it. 

But it is thought that, at any rate, it would determine 
controversies to have one who could speak authoritatively. 
Would it ? Did it ? Is it true that the disciples believed 
just what Christ told them ? We know that they did not. 
Did the most learned and educated men in the time of the 
Saviour believe what he taught them, when he went up into 
the temple ? We know that they did not. Did the early 
church that were immediately under his personal influence 



THE DEPARTED CUBIST. 465 

believe exactly alike ? We know that they did not. Nay, 
did not he himself say that there were many things which he 
could not teach them, because they were not large enough to 
receive them — because they could not hold them ? ' ' I have 
yet many things/' he says, " to say unto you, but ye cannot 
bear them now." He recognized distinctly the fact that 
something more was necessary than to give men a word-state- 
ment of the truth — that there must be something more in 
them before they could receive it. 

Take another example. One would think that the fact 
that Christ must suffer was simple enough. The Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures pointing that way, and it being a mere phys- 
ical historical fact, one would suppose that everybody could 
understand it ; and yet his disciples did not comprehend it ; 
and although within three months of his crucifixion he talked 
of it to them again and again, Peter took him aside and dealt 
with him [for in that little church there was freedom among 
the brotherhood : they dared to say, even to their own 
Master, what they thought]. Peter rebuked him, and said, 
" It shall not be so • you shall not die ; the priests shall not take 
you and crucify you. You say that you shall be killed, and 
that after three days you shall rise again ; what do you say 
such things to us for ?" Jesus tried to impress that historical 
physical fact upon his disciples, all the way as they went to 
Jerusalem, and after they were there ; but he failed to make 
them understand it. And after he was crucified, after he 
had risen again, they were in a mist of amazement. They 
could not get it through their heads that the Messiah had 
suffered and died. 

Well, then, was the presence of Christ so successful as a 
means of indoctrinating men with the truth ? Did not the 
mind act the same then as it does now ? and was it not 
necessary for men to get at the truth by unfolding themselves, 
and by educating their inward nature to the thing taught 
them ? Take the most moral, the most refined and cultivated, 
natures of the Saviour's time. You will observe that his 
teachings in Galilee were very different from his teachings in 
Jerusalem. He instructed according to the audience which 
he addressed. In Galilee there was a kind of cosmopolitan 



466 THE DEPARTED CHB1ST 

population. Armies of every nation had been there, and 
had shed their soldiers, and a mixture of nationalities 
was the result. You perceive that in Galilee Christ taught 
truths in their lower forms ; but you observe that when he 
went into Jerusalem, and passed through his conflicts with 
the priests, and scribes, and rulers, his utterances became very 
mystical. They said to him, " If you are divine, prove it." 
What was his answer to them? Substantially this: "You 
cannot be judges of what is divine. To enable you to know 
whether or not I am divine requires that there should be more 
sensibility in you, in order that when you see divinity you 
will recognize it." 

A man says to me, ' e You claim that to be a beautiful 
picture : prove that it is beautiful." I say, "Look at the 
picture : is it beautiful to you ?" " No, it is not." "Well 
then, nothing can prove to you that it is beautiful. " 

I say to a man, "Pour and four make eight." "Well, 
prove it," he says. " Does not your arithmetical sense jump 
to that conclusion?" "No." "Then it cannot be proved 
to you." 

There are things, the comprehension of which when they 
are stated depends upon certain corresponding intellectual 
qualities; and if those qualities do not respond in you, 
then nothing can help you to see these things. 

I remember how difficult it was for me to understand 
what was meant by "fine lines" when I first began the study 
of art. I could not tell what a "fine line" was. I thought 
it was probably a line that was not broad. I heard critics 
commenting upon pictures, and I wished I knew how to 
criticise pictures. They would say, " Look at the distribu- 
tion of the parts ! What symmetry ! What fore-ground, mid- 
dle-ground and distance ! What gradations of color ! What 
beautiful lights and shades !" I looked at the canvas, and 
could not make much out of it. T could see the " fore- 
ground," but I could not tell what the " middle-ground," or 
the "distance" was. So far as light and shade were con- 
cerned, I could not see much else but shade ; — and all be- 
cause my artistic sense had not been cultivated. 

It was through a quiet familiarity with these things that 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 467 

I came to have an insight into them. As soon as i" changed, 
by culture, pictures seemed to change, too. And now when 
I look at a picture, I am not such a fool as to see merely 
what stares out from the canvas ; I see its finer and less ob- 
vious features. 

There is a process by which men learn the qualities of 
things. This fact was recognized by the Saviour, when he 
said to the chief priests, the scribes and the rulers, ' ' I am 
doing the works of God ; believe me for the truth that I am 
telling you, or believe me for my works' sake. If ye cannot 
believe, it is because ye are the children of the world. Ye 
are of your father, the devil. Ye live on a lower plane, and 
cannot comprehend the evidences of divinity, which are 
not arguments nor analogies, but the presentation of moral 
truth and moral beauty. If, when these are opened to your 
mind, they do not strike you as meaning divinity, there is no 
evidence further that can be presented to you, because you 
cannot be taught on spiritual subjects." While he was 
on earth, — and he had before him the most intelligent men, 
the men that were the most refined, the men that had 
been most developed in moral ideas, of all on the globe, — he 
could not teach them .spiritual things until they had gained 
some experience of them ; and if he had lived three hundred, 
five hundred, eight hundred, a thousand or two thousand 
years, he would down to this day have taught only those who 
were competent to understand, by reason of their growth. 
The earth would have always followed the same law that it 
does now, the same law that he pointed out to them then, 
and we should have had to learn by stages, and rise accord- 
ingly. 

But we should not even then have come to unity. There 
never will be absolute unity in respect to moral truths. Any 
truths which are susceptible of being made unitary to the 
whole human race must be very low, very elementary, very 
broad. Even in the consideration of physical truths there is 
but very little absolute unity — if any — in men. And when 
you take social and moral truths, still more when you take 
spiritual truths, they are of such a nature that they report 
themselves to each individual according to his conformation. 



468 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

It is not probable that, taking the subtle truth of sound or 
color, any two persons in this house would see or hear it alike. 
This is not a speculation. The pilot on one of the ferry- 
boats can tell whether one or another engineer is down below. 
He has to run differently according to the dispositions of the 
engineers who are on duty. He said to me, (i Well, So-and-so 
is slow ; and if he is engineer I know that when I ring the 
bell he must have time before he reverses the engine ; where- 
as, when my engineer (the one that runs mostly with me) is 
at his post, I can ring later, because his mind works quicker." 
It takes longer for one to receive the impression than for the 
other. 

This is a curious illustration, in a homely way, of that 
which is understood among astronomers. The way in which 
men are organized is such that their power or readiness of 
vision varies. When there is a transit of Venus, or of some 
other planet, and twenty men look at it, the sensitiveness of 
some of them is such that they will see it quicker than the 
others, so that there will be an appreciable point of time be- 
tween the seeing of one and the seeing of another. One being 
quick, and another slower, and another still slower, there are 
differences of seconds in the times when the contact reports 
itself to the different persons ; and seconds are of great im- 
portance in such matters. Distinguished observers have 
u personal " equations, as they are called, by which they meas- 
ure each other in this matter of swiftness and accuracy. 
One is at the top of the list, another is lower down on the list, 
and another is still lower down ; and, in comparing the re- 
sults of their observations, allowance has to be made for the 
personal equation of each. And that which is true of the 
nervous system in regard to sight is a thousand times more 
true with respect to the higher functions. 

For example, take a person who is a roaring, jolly, coarse- 
fibered man. He loves his friend. Yes, a kind of love ho 
has — that sort of love which he shows by coming up and slap- 
ping you on the back so hard as to knock you half across the 
sidewalk, and saying, " You are my friend : I like you !" 
Not far off, just over the way, is another nature to whom 
love is as an atmosphere of coming and going elements, full, 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST 469 

delicate, sweet, and fine, opening and expanding in every di- 
rection. And how different those two natures are ! How 
different to them the sound of the word " love" is ! To one 
it is a rude shout of good-nature ; to the other it is like the 
music of the spheres. 

Take honor. What is honor ? A thousand different 
things, according to the moral stature or the gradation of the 
men by whom it is estimated. He that does not know what 
it is to be honorable cannot understand a discourse about 
honor. 

Take any of the truths which belong to a man's social life. 
They vary according to the fiber, the education, or the com- 
petence of the persons before whom they are brought for ad- 
judication. Disinterestedness, to be understood, requires first 
to have been felt in some degree. Self-sacrifice with gladness 
is an absolute mystery to men who never have known what 
it is. But those who have some personal knowledge of these 
qualities can interpret them. 

Now to the great realm of religious truths belong the social 
and spiritual elements in man. They cannot be learned by 
the senses, nor by arguments, nor by demonstrations ; and the 
idea of a unity of belief is simply absurd. Each truth will be 
to every man what his own receiving nature makes it. 

Here is a man whose nature is absolutely practical. His 
forehead retreats, but his brow juts out. He is immensely 
perceptive, but he has no reflective power. He is strong in 
his social affections, but he is weak in his moral nature. 
Truth to that man interprets itself according to his organiza- 
tion. It is with different men in this respect as it is with 
different kinds of glass in the transmission of light. For 
instance, when light comes in through a perfectly clear pane 
of glass, it is white light, combining all the various colors ; 
but if the glass is yellow, or red, or green, it lets in light of 
its own color, and that only. Men are like cathedral windows, 
kaleidoscopic with stained glass of all manner of colors and 
shades, each piece transmitting light of its own peculiar color ; 
and the revelation of truth is according to the faculties in 
the men themselves through which it reports itself. In some 
men the imagination largely predominates, and when the truth 



470 THE DEPARTED CHBIiST. 

comes to them it coruscates and fills their minds with all 
manner of glowing conceptions. It sends forth from them 
pulsations that roll like waves on some distant shore. The 
truth is multitudinous and large to them. 

Where a man is intensely practical, if the truth is pre- 
sented to him, he says, " State it to me exactly. Tell me 
just where it begins and just where it stops." He seems to 
think it is a thing that can be ciphered out on a slate. Many 
men appear to have the idea that all the truth in the universe 
can be written down in a little book, and called the system of 
divinity ; and that when it is so written down, men can see 
it all alike. Why, such is the infinity, the almightiness, the 
profuseness, the multitudinousness, the variety in endless 
cycles, of truth, that there is not in the soul of man a com- 
petence to conceive of ' so vast and varied a realm ; and if 
you could, you cannot express it in human language. If men 
saw moral truths just alike, it would be an absolute contradic- 
tion of all other facts as they exist in nature. It would be a 
mystery which we could not solve. If the Bible said that 
men were to see moral truths alike, it would be one of the 
most powerful arguments against its validity. So far from 
this being the case, all the way through the New Testament 
(particularly in the Epistles, which treat of specific subjects 
relating to the churches) there are endless allusions to differ- 
ences of faith. 

" Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, hut not to doubtful dis- 
putations." "God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest 
another man's servant ?' ' 

There are abundant recognitions in Scripture of the in- 
finite variations in men's conceptions and beliefs. 

Therefore, the idea that there is a system of truth which 
has a certain head, a certain trunk, and certain parts, and 
that it can be put in such a form that everybody can see all 
that belongs to it just alike, is a fool's phantasy ; and the 
whole world has been running after this ignis fatuus. 

It is supposed that the world would be the gainer if there 
were One in Jerusalem to tell men just what to believe. It 
is thought that unity of truth might be secured under such 
circumstances. Well, how much has been gained by the 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST 47 1 

slight attempt to unitize the truth which has been made, 
not in Jerusalem, but in another quarter ? How admirably 
the truth has become unitized by the efforts which were made 
at Rome ! How perfectly every body in the world agrees now 
as to what the truth is ! Before the last great Council the 
whole Catholic world was split up on the doctrine of the Im- 
maculate Conception ; so the bishops gathered together from 
all nations, and it was determined^ that the Virgin was im- 
maculate ; and she was raised a few ranks higher ; and the 
decree went out. What did the men, who did not believe it 
before the Council, do after it was stated to be a fact by the 
Council ? They shut their mouths, and swallowed — that is 
all. They agreed that they would say that it was so ; but do 
you suppose they believed it was so any more than they did 
before ? 

An old rich man is visited by a nephew who is his heir, 
and they sit down to the table, and meat is set before them, 
and the old man says, "That is a hedgehog." The butler 
has whispered to the nephew, and said, " Don't you dispute 
the old man. Agree with him in everything. Whatever he 
says, you say." And when the old man says, "That is a 
hedgehog, my friend," the nephew says, " Yes, it is a hedge- 
hog." That is like the unity which is produced by Coun- 
cils. 

When, later, it was determined that, not the church, and 
not any council of the church, but the pope himself, in his 
own proper person, was infallible, do you suppose that Anto- 
nelli believed it ? Of course he accepted it ; but do you 
suppose he believed it ? Do you suppose that Newman, who 
was one of the acutest men in England, and who contested it 
with a tongue like fire — do you suppose that he believed it, 
because he gathered up his feet in bed, saying, " I won't fight 
it " ? Do you believe in miracles of such a sort ? I do not. 
The idea of unitizing beliefs by any authority or power has 
no foundation in reason or fact. You cannot make men one in 
belief until you make them one in psychological formation. 
The trouble is in human nature itself. Men are so different in 
their make-up with regard to faculties and their functions 
that the same truth coming through one man shines more 



472 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

blue than yellow, coming through another man shines more 
red than blue, and so on. 

It is the glory of truth that it is yoluminous ; that it is 
too large to be compassed by one human mind ; that its vari- 
ations, as between man and . man, are so many ; and that 
differences of belief as they exist, if accepted by the church 
in a spirit of love, come nearer to expressing universality of 
truth than anything else. Blessed be the variations that 
bring us nearer to union than those authorities which wipe out 
variations under the stupid pretence of wooden-headed unity. 
It is a mistake to suppose that if the Saviour had remained 
in Jerusalem his presence would have unitized men in belief. 
It would have performed no service of that kind. 

It was expedient that Jesus should return to the heavenly 
estate, to the spiritual realm, in order that the imagination of 
the whole human family, now instructed by some historical 
metes and bounds, might be put in possession of definite 
facts, of the materials that were authoritative, and of the ge- 
neric ideal or conception called Christ. Having ascended to 
heaven, he could really be nearer, through the imagination, 
to the race, than he could have been if he had remained in 
Jerusalem. That is a far-off land, and if Christ were alive 
there to-day, I should think of him by my lower faculties ; 
and connected with my thoughts of him would be thoughts 
of leagues, of days, and of traveling by land and by sea. He 
is nearer to me now than he would be if he were in Jeru- 
salem. 

The child is in Africa among the savage tribes. She is 
far, far away, as the wet-eyed mother knows every night when 
she prays for her. But by-and-by tidings come, " God has 
taken her"; and behold, from that day the child is right 
overhead, and the mother almost whispers to her. Ten thou- 
sand persons know that friends who have gone to heaven now 
seem nearer to them, really, than when they lived almost in 
their very presence on earth, or when they were separated by 
time and distance. And Jesus is nearer to his people to-day 
than lie would be if he were in Jerusalem. The imagination 
is a better interpreter of the Lord Jesus Christ to you than 
your senses could possibly have been. 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 473 

It is expedient for the race that the imagination should be 
put upon exercise practically. Men seem to think that the 
imagination is one of the lighter faculties ; that it may be 
used sportively in alliance with sensuous beauty : but the 
imagination is to be used in connection with the reason as 
well as the senses ; and these elements combined give 'higher 
ideals than can be attained by the senses alone. The whole 
race goes from the lower to the higher planes of life through 
the imagination. 

Through the aid of imagination meri gain much more com- 
prehensive and satisfying views of the invisible God than they 
could get of him through the senses if he were visible before 
them. Idolatry, the worship of a visible God, has always been 
bad, whether the idol was in the shape of grotesque stone, or 
whether it was in the shape of a rare Apollo, or whether 
it was in the shape of a church, or whether it was in 
the shape of a creed. Any god that men can fix their 
lower senses upon, and rest, is bad for the race. The neces- 
sity of men to lift themselves above their lower range of facul- 
ties, and make their life in the realm of the invisible, out of 
the reach of the senses, and develope their nature up and 
away from the physical and material — that is the grand civil- 
izing and Christianizing necessity of the race. And to have 
our Saviour present with us would be to smother those in- 
stincts on which our elevation and spiritualization depend ; 
while to have him absent from us in Heaven is to have above 
us a bright flame like a blaze of fire, circuiting higher and 
higher to where Christ sits at the right hand of God. 

Christ said that it was expedient that he should go away, 
and that if he did not go the Comforter would not come. 
Blessed word ! And yet it is but a classification of the higher 
words, Holy Spirit. It is a blessed word because if there is 
anything that we need in this world, it is comforting. There 
are gods of love, there are gods of wine, there are gods of 
war, there are gods of lust, there are gods of cruelty, there 
are gods of government and law, there are gods of equity and 
justice, there are gods of abundance; but that which we need 
more than anything else is a God of motherhood, a God of 
patience., a God of gentleness, a God of forbearance, a God of 



474 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

forgiveness, a God of love in its fullest potency, a God that 
can brood, and wait, and help, and comfort while helping. 
And that word to me sounds like one sweet bell in a whole 
jangle of discordant bells. 

Sometimes, in the summer, when the chimes of old Trin- 
ity are ringing over in New York, one bell sounds across the 
water to my window clearer and sweeter than all the rest ; 
and in the Bible there is no other expression that to me is so 
sweet as "The God of all comfort;" aad there is no word 
that is sweeter to me than that word "Comforter" which 
Jesus employed. 

He said, "The Comforter cannot come if I do not de- 
part." God comforting the world — the erring, the sinning, 
the wasted and the wasting world ! What a consoling 
thought ! The world needs a God to comfort it. And as, 
when the little child falls in its play, and cries, the nurse 
runs out from the household, and picks it up, and comes back 
with her homely face irradiated, wiping the tears from its 
eyes ; so God shall lift us from the ground when we fall, and 
wipe the tears from our eyes. It is just such a God that we 
want. 

The Spirit ; the Holy Spirit ; the One who stands over 
against those subtle elements in the human soul which we 
call the spiritual instinct or sentiment — not a God of the 
body, of the basilar reason, or of the social affections, but a 
God higher than that, who is interpreted to us by the higher 
forms of moral sense — this Holy Spirit comes to take the 
place of Christ, and open the doors of the understanding 
through these highest intuitions, and give light and direc- 
tion to our interior nature, and enable us to triumph over 
death, and crown us sons in the kingdom of God. And this 
is infinitely better than that Christ should have continued on 
the earth in his physical form. 

Now, men and brethren, how blessed it is to feel that the 
heaven is filled by One who is interpreted to our spirit by his- 
torical sympathies as he never could have been interpreted to 
us in Jerusalem, where he would have had to walk the streets 
as men do, where he would have had to eat and drink as men 
do, and where he would have had to sleep as men do. In the 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 4?5 

spirit-land, whither we are going, and from whence we are 
looking for the coming of our Saviour — there, immortal, in 
the blessedness of unchanging youth and power, Jesus waits 
for us ; and there is not a long day's journey between us and 
him. The distance is not even so great as that which must 
be gone over to send a letter from the Post-Office in New 
York to the Post-Office in Brooklyn. No thought emerges 
from your soul that does not go instantly to him. You are 
near to him because he is near to you. There are no dis- 
tances in spirituality. Yon are with the Lord,, and he is for- 
ever with you. You are in him, and he is in you. By your 
feeling, by your inspirations, by the very intents of your 
heart, you are in his presence ; and it is an exceeding great 
consolation to believe that as one and another of your house- 
hold go out from you, they go into the arms of Ohrist. 

Is there anything sweeter to grief and sorrow than that 
passage where the New Testament, sweet book of the soul, 
speaks of dying ? Let Tuscanized Eomans talk of death ; let 
heathen mythologies come to us with skulls, and cross-bones, 
and hideous images of dying, of the monster Death, of the 
tyrant Death, of the scythe-armed Death, of a grim and terri- 
ble fate ; but what terror can any of these representations 
have for us when we have for our encouragement and hope 
the promises of the New Testament! 

On a summer's day, the gentle western wind brings in all 
the sweets of the field and the garden ; and the child, over- 
tasked by joy, comes back weary, and climbs for sport into 
the mother's lap ; and before he can sport he feels the balm 
of rest stealing over him, and lays his curly head back upon 
her arm ; and look ! he goes to sleep ; hush ! he has gone to 
sleep ; and all the children stand smiling. How beautiful it 
13 to see a child drop asleep on its mother's arm ! And it is 
said, "He fell asleep in Jesus." Is there anything so high, 
to noble, or divine, as the way in which the New Testament 
speaks of dying ? How near death is, and how beautiful! 

If you have lost companions, children, friends, you have 
not lost them. They followed the Pilot. They went through 
airy channels, unknown and unsearchable, and they are with 
the Lord ; and you are going to be with him, too. I die to 



476 THE DEPARTED CHRIST, 

go, not to Jerusalem, but to the New Jerusalem. I die, 
riot to wait in the rock-ribbed sepulcher, which shall hold me 
sure ; I die, that when this body is dropped I shall have a 
place, in the inward fullness of my spiritual power, with the 
Lord. 

Then welcome gray hairs ! they come as white banners 
that wave from the other and higher life. Welcome infirmi- 
ties ! they are but the loosening of the cords preparatory to 
taking down the tabernacle. Welcome troubles ! they are 
but the signs that we are crossing the sea, and that not far 
away is our home — that house of our Father in which are 
many mansions, where dwells Jesus, the loved and all-loving. 
And let us rejoice that he has gone from the body, that he 
may be ever present in the Spirit, and that ere long we 
may be with him. 



~«~* 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We bless thee, thou All-comprehending God, that f we need not 
explain or make known our mistakes to thee, as if thou wert ignorant 
of them. We do not draw near to thy door as paupers come begging ; 
uor do*we confess our sins as men who show their ills and ails. 

Thou dost not desire to humiliate us. We hear thee saying, Hence- 
forth 1 call you not slaves, but friends. It is with this call in our ear 
that we draw near to thee this morning. Thou nearest, thou best of 
friends, before whom we are perfectly known, and to whom we need 
not rehearse anything— thou art in sympathy with us, understanding 
us better than we understand ourselves, knowing our frame, our 
weakness, our infirmities, our sinfulness, or struggles, our aspirations, 
all the things in which we fail, or achieve but partial success. All our 
life is known to thee ; and we rejoice that thou art so large in thyself 
that thou canst take us as we are. and not compel us to be trans- 
formed before thou canst accept us at all. We are before thee as plants 
in a garden, upon which the gardener bestows all pains, that they 
may come up ; freeing them from every assault and evil, that he may 
bring forth from them the blossom and the fruit. 

Thou art the Husbandman ; thou art the Gardener, and thou art 
taking us in the seed and planting us; thou art rearing us with 
infinite care and kindness; and we mourn that the requital is so poor. 
Yet, we rejoice to believe that our imperfections, our poor growth, 
our dullness, the unfragrance of our blossoms, are acceptable to 



THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 477 

thee. There is a better life, there is a warmer clime, there are nobler 
conditions; and to those thou wilt yet one day transplant us. 

How many there are that see only the leaves now, but shall see the 
blossoms by and by ! How many there are that see no fruitage here, 
but shall see glorious fruitage in presence of our God! It is to 
the heavenly land that we look, taking refuge in our hope from all 
the disappointments and poor accomplishments of this life— for who 
among all the men that live can speak of his perfectness? and who can 
God take because he is perfectly good ? All men lie upon thy bosom 
as children upon the arms of a nurse. All are enfolded in thy bosom, 
and grow by thy mercy. By the grace of God we are what we are in 
everything that is excellent. By thy grace comes patience with our 
infirmities and our imperfections. By thy grace comes the forgive- 
ness of our sins, and our adoption into the family of Christ, and all 
the joy of the Spirit. We praise thy name for the revelation of thy 
nature. We bless thee for all the light and hope and gladness that 
there is in the Holy Ghost. And if there are any in thy presence this 
morning who have entered upon the divine life recognizing thy 
presence, help them to give forth silently, from their innermost souls, 
those thanks and those sympathies which are sweet to thee, no matter 
how imperfect they are. 

We beseech of thee, O God, to accept every good thing, everything 
which we desire to have good, everything which in any manner is 
good ; and wait not for our perfectness, but take us in our poorness. 
Take every heart that would be pure, and that strives for purity; 
everyone that would find rest, and that seeks it earnestly ; everyone 
that desires to be set free from that evil which is in himself, and is 
struggling against it. We beseech of thee that by thy Spirit thou 
wilt inflame our ambition for things spiritual, and our desire for 
nearness to thee. 

Draw near to any who have not recognized thee, who have no 
secret strife, who are too much at rest, too content with the sensuous 
life of the body, and the outward things of the world. Take not 
from them these things which are good, but teach them how inferior 
they are to that higher joy which is prepared for those who see God, 
and dwell in him. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt bring more and more out into 
light, from twilight and from darkness, any who are wandering, or 
have wandered from the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls. Bring 
back to truth, to duty, and to eager ambition for things right and 
high, any who have stumbled and fallen. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt have compassion not only upon 
those whom we compassionate, but upon .all— upon those whom men 
neglect, and upon those whom men despise. Blessed be thy name 
that the humanities of the universe are not such as prevail among 
men, who devour one another, and selfishly grind each other, and for- 
give little, but exact much. We rejoice that the Heart that is 
sovereign, and knows all things in heaven above and in the earth be- 
neath, loves even unto suffering and unto death, and carries our 
burdens rather than imposes burdens upon us, and for our sake 
yields his own self. 



478 THE DEPARTED CHRIST. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt have compassion upon the 
vicious, upon criminals, upon those who are cast out from the 
sympathy of life. O Lord God, is there no restoring grace ? Is the 
work done ? Are there no doors by which the fallen may return to 
virtue? We commend to thee all who are degraded. We desire to 
have such a sense of thy wisdom and of thy cleansing power, that we 
may commend to thee in all faith every wanderer and every wrong 
doer in the hope that thou canst find what man cannot — the way of 
reaching and purifying the heart. 

We pray that thy Spirit may be shed abroad with more and more 
efficacy; and since thou hast made thy children to be the lights of 
the world, grant that our light may so shine that men, seeing our 
good works, shall glorify our Father which is in heaven. And from 
the experience of thy people may men draw hope and courage, and 
venture upon that Saviour who is so precious to us. 

We pray that thou wilt comfort any who are in affliction, and 
lift upon them the light, of thy countenance. Relieve all burdens, or 
give strength to bear them, to those who are oppressed thereby. 
Guide all those who wander. Give certitude to all those who are per- 
plexed. Show the way of duty to all those who seek it and do not 
find it! And may thy kingdom come and thy will be done in the 
hearts of all. 

We pray for the churches of this city, for the churches of the great 
city near us, and for all the churches of this whole land and of the 
world. We pray that the power of truth as it is in Jesus Christ may 
be augmented a thousand fold, and that that day may speedily come 
when all the earth shall see thy salvation ; when nations shall be 
brought from barbarism to civilization ; when men of no faith shall 
have faith in the veritable God ; when truth shall prevail ; when love 
shall be in the ascendant; when the earth shall be redeemed from 
animalism ; when every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree ; 
and when peace shall smile upon all the race. Lord, thou hast 
promised it, and in thine own time thou wilt perform it; but make 
haste, we beseech of thee, and cause the revolving days to speed until 
that day of prediction shall come, and joy shall reign upon the earth 
even as it reigns in heaven. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises ever- 
more. Amen, 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITE 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 



" For we walk by faith, and not by sight."— 2 Cor. v., 7. 



To walk is to live ; and the declaration is that we live by 
faith, and not by sight. That brings us, at once, on to the 
vexed question, What is faith ? and therels, perhaps, no other 
one term in use in Christendom that is more perplexing and 
more widely used with less definite conception. To a very large 
extent it is supposed to be the antithesis of reason ; or, it is 
supposed that it is a state of mind which springs from def- 
erence to authority ; that when, for example, an adequate au- 
thority states that which the reason cannot compass, faith is 
the act of receiving it — receiving without perceiving — receiv- 
ing without understanding. And since it is not easy to 
imagine a man receiving anything without the exercise of his 
intelligence, faith is supposed to be a divine quality, and it is 
supposed that that quality, therefore, helps a man to do what 
he cannot do himself — what his mind is not calculated to do. 
So, it is supposed that faith is the act of receiving things 
which men cannot understand — things which are above their 
reason, or, as in some instances men teach, things which are 
contrary to their reason. We employ this term according to 
the different schools of theology, or according to the different 
churches which exist. It has a variable meaning ; but there 
is this that is common to all meanings which are given to it — 
namely, that they are obscure, and that they beget in men a 

Sunday Morning, February 8, 1874. "Lesson: 2 Cor. iv. 14-18; v. 1-11. Hymns 
(Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 217, 868, 660. 



482 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

vague and misty wish that they knew what faith was, or that 
they had it. 

Now, it seems to me that there never will be any better 
definition of faith given than that which is found in Hebrews, 
where it is declared to be "the evidence of tilings not seen." 

Well, let us put it in a little different shape. Employ the 
term not visible, or its equivalent invisible. Faith is the evi- 
dence of invisible things. Let us change it a little more. 
Visible things are things which are recognized by the senses 
— by the eye, the nose, the tongue, the ear, and the hand. 
We call these material qualities, and they are, therefore, said 
to be sensuous, or of the senses. So that Faith, in its most 
general definition, is the evidence of things not to be recognized 
by the senses. 

The evidence of any truth that is visible, or that is realiz- 
able by our senses, is of various kinds — one sort for hearing, 
another sort for smelling, another sort for tasting, another 
sort for handling, and another sort for seeing ; but they are 
all generalized, and we understand what it is to be familiar 
with the truths of the senses — truths which the body, as dis- 
tinguished from the mind, has the power of apprehending or 
reasoning upon. We are all familiar with the fact that when 
we come to look into life — -life that is developed above the 
savage or barbarian — that which is its glory and beauty is not 
rendered to the senses, and never makes its appearance. We 
know that all those elements which we term "refinement" 
are in their inward nature and origin invisible qualities ; that 
they are mental qualities ; that taste, the sense of beauty, the 
feeling of honor, truth in its beautifulness, all those elements 
which go to make beauty, which we call character, and which 
become more and more beautiful as manhood rises higher and 
higher — that all these elements are invisible to the senses. 
Their effects are recognized by the senses, but the things 
themselves are not. 

For instance, you can say, Ci A man owns a thousand acres 
of land, and he is rich ;" or, "A man owns five millions of 
dollars' worth of property, and he is rich ;" but when it is 
said, "A man is rich in goodness," you cannot count that ; 
you cannot measure it ; there is no way in which you can es- 



THE NA TUR ALNESS OF FAITH. 483 

timate it ; there is no material standard by which to judge of 
it. Goodness is a thing whose effect you see, but the thing 
itself you do not see. That is an invisible quality. A man 
has strength by which he can lift five hundred pounds. You 
can see the sources of that strength. You know where it is. 
You know that it is in his loins, in his arms, in his shoulders, 
in his bones, in his muscle. You can trace it right home. But 
there is a strength which enables men to stand as Washington 
did at Valley Forge — strength of character. You cannot see 
that, because it is invisible ; and yet, as a quality, it attracts 
the world's admiration. A man may be as rich as Croesus, 
and his riches are on a level with the lowest understanding, 
and men's material senses comprehend that ; but a man is 
rich in virtue ; a man is rich as Kaphael was, in ideal beauty ; 
a man is rich as Plato was, in intellectual conceptions ; and 
when you speak of riches of these kinds, you are conscious 
that they are not realizable by the eye, by the ear, by the 
hand, by the tongue, or by the nose. They are things which 
you have to conceive of. 

So everybody comes gradually to the habit of speaking 
about things which he thinks of, or sees in his imagina- 
tion. A man makes a statement, and you say at once to 
him, "Did you see it?" And he says, " Xo, but I thought 
of it." Little by little, men have come to distinguish be- 
tween things that are real but that go on inside, and things 
that really exist, and go on outside. So that, perhaps 
without analyzing and coming to that definite conclusion, 
everybody knows there are two worlds — the external and 
the internal ; and that the internal is just as real as the 
external. Many of you sit down for days, and weeks, and 
months, and spend your time thinking ; and if a person 
were to ask you what you were thinking about ; if he were to 
say to you, " Show me that about which you are thinking," 
you would be obliged to say, " I cannot show it to you ;" and 
if he were a person of a practical, material turn of mind, he 
would very likely say, "If it were anything, you could." 
But what are you thinking about ? Sentiment ; love ; 
beauty ; sensibility ; fidelity ; virtue. What does a mother 
think about ? What does an absent lover think about ? 



484 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH, 

What does an exiled patriot think about ? There is a great 
work going on all the time in men with large brains ; and if 
you were to say to them, " Show me what you are thinking 
about," they would say, "I cannot." If you were to say to 
them, " But cannot I see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, handle 
it?" "No." There are hours, and days, and weeks, and 
months, and years that are blessedly occupied with things 
which you may bring to the door of every one of the senses 
and the sense will say, " It does not belong to me ; I do not 
know anything about it." 

Is it strange, then, that it occurred to the old philosophers, 
and to Paul among them, that there were two men in one — 
that there was an outside man, and an inside man ; that the 
outside man took care of everything which belonged to the 
material, and the inside man everything which belonged to 
the immaterial ? Paul speaks of the inward man and of the 
outward man, saying, "Though our outward man perish, yet 
the inward man is renewed day by day." Paul speaks of the 
upper man and the under man. You will see in the seventh 
chapter of Eomans the play between the spirit-man and the 
flesh-man. The flesh-man is all the time doing what it has no 
business to do, and no business to want to do, and the spirit- 
man is all the time crying out at it, and fighting it ; and he 
even goes so far as to say, "My personal identity lies in the 
spirit-man, and not in the body-man." So, then, he says, 'It 
is not I that sin, but the flesh, the body, the outer man, the 
lower nature. I do not want to do this, and I protest against 
it ; but this outside man does it in spite of me. 9 

Paul with his spirit-man loves honor, truth, nobleness, di- 
vinity, everything that is high and good ; but the upper part of 
his nature is imprisoned, and is under subjection to his body- 
man ; and this body-man cuts up all manner of antics ; and 
he does not like these thmgs, and he protests against them. 
I do not undertake to say that this is more than a figure, or 
that it will stand the test of modern psychology ; but it is the 
standpoint of the apostle ; and he says, therefore, in the pas- 
sage which I read to you this morning, " For which cause we 
faint not ; but though our outward man perish, yet the in- 
ward man is renewed day by day." "We look not at the 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 485 

things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. " 
He goes on to say that super-sensuous things which are seen 
are temporal, and belong to time and the world ; while things 
which are not seen, invisible qualities, belong to the eternal 
sphere — the spirit realm. And then, after some other pas- 
sages, comes this, in substance : We live by the seeing of 
things that are impalpable and invisible ; things which are the 
power «of our life. 

Now, when you apply to such thoughts as these, to such 
an explanation, the passage in Hebrews, (( Faith is the evi- 
dence of things not seen " — faith is that state of mind which 
rises above the visible and the material, and recognizes, and 
acts in view of, immaterial or invisible truths — then you have 
the generic definition of faith. 

Well, take that conception of it, and see, now, another 
thing — that while faith, generic, or in its largest definition, 
is that state of mind which recognizes truths that have no 
presentation to the physical senses, yet there are a great many 
specific differences in faith. In other words, men who realize 
invisible truths will find that the realization of those truths 
will vary according to their nature. So, then, we have in the 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews ever so many kinds of faith 
described. 

"Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of 
things not seen." 

Faith, in other words, is the dealing of the mind with in- 
visible, intellectual and moral qualities. Then the apostle 
goes on to say : 

" Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by 
the Word of God." 

Now, nobody stood by and saw the world made — though 
some men talk as though they did. Here is the statement 
handed down to mankind, and they accept it as a fact thafc 
occurred far back in the past. They take it in through 
the imagination. No man could realize it in any way 
except by imagining it. We cannot comprehend it by the 
senses. No material evidence can bring it to our conscious- 
ness. If we recognize it at all, we must do it by the imagi- 
nation ; and this imagination is called faith. 



486 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

44 By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than 
Cain." 

That is to say, Abel had a conception of God, and of moral 
qualities in him, which led him to act from higher motives 
than Cain did. 

" By faith, Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, 
moved with fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his house." 

That is to say, Noah was told by God that certain? events 
would take place ; and he believed God ; he expected that 
they would take place ; and then, under the impulse of fear, 
he prepared an ark in which to save his household. 

So the chapter goes on, showing how different events took 
place in the old Hebrew history, all the way down ; and each 
of these men acted, not from a knowledge of things in the 
present which they could see, and hear, and smell, and taste, 
and handle, but from a large consideration of the future, from 
a consideration of things that lay above the ordinary sen- 
suous perceptions of men. 

Now, faith may be a sense of invisible things with fear ; a 
sense of invisible things with hope ; a sense of invisible things 
with love ; a sense of invisible things with ambition ; a sense 
of invisible things with avarice, and so on. In other words, 
all the different impulses that accompany and stimulate this 
realization of the unseen world constitutes specific differ- 
ences in the kinds of faith that exist. 

Faith, therefore, is not any one experience relating to 
religion alone, or to moral themes alone : it is a generic term 
that designates the action of mind in certain relations to- 
ward invisible truths ; and it is as large as the capacity of 
man ; as large as the assignable universe ; as large as the great 
outlying world around about us. 

See, then, how this word came to the Corinthians. Cor- 
inth, you know, was the most corrupt, busy, elegant, pleas- 
ure-loving city of Greece. Its streets were the thoroughfares 
of commerce. They were also adorned by art. In this re- 
spect, it was second only to Athens, and in glitter it was supe- 
rior to Athens ; for the taste of Athens was subdued, while the 
taste of Corinth blazed and glared. The city was rich. Its tem- 
ples were voluptuous. The pleasures of sense were wrought into 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 487 

the Liturgy, and were made to be part and parcel of worship. 
Men called to education in Corinth heard in the streets the 
sounds of music perpetually. There were processions after 
processions. There were all manner of exhibitions. Strangers 
wandered there from every part of the globe. There was 
everything for the ear to hear ; for the eye to admire ; for the 
hand to handle ; there was everything for exciting every nerve 
that had in it the vibration of pleasure, Corinth was a me- 
tropolis of sensuous life and sensuous enjoyment. And when 
the Apostle went there and preached, and afterwards when he 
wrote there, he preached and wrote to men who were con- 
stantly assailed on every side by physical life and material com- 
forts, and whose very religion had come down, and staid down, 
and presented itself to them only in the form of altars, and 
priests, and sacrifices, and priestesses that were no better than 
they should be ; men worshiped their very gods through their 
basest appetites ; and there never was a body of men that 
needed so much to be lifted above the sensuous and the ma- 
terial as the Corinthians. 

It was to these men that the Apostle said, "We live by faith; 
we walk by faith ; it is not what you see, or hear, or handle, 
or eat, or wear, that is the most essential. Neither your streets, 
nor your houses, nor your laws, nor your institutions, nor 
your earthly governments, nor your armies, nor your fleets, nor 
your manufactories, nor your wealth, is the most important. 
All this vast equipage, all this massive accumulation, is, after 
all, in the realm and under the dominion of the senses." 
But in the thunder of its busiest days there overhung that 
glittering and voluptuous city truths which were ten thousand 
times more important, though they were silent, than all the 
clamorous truths that lived below — life constantly coming, 
death constantly going ; manhood ; immortality ; Clod ; provi- 
dence ; all truths that spring up under the arch of honor, of 
virtue, of submission, of faith, of hope, of love. As over that 
great Babylon yonder* on summer evenings there come radi- 
ant clouds, all struck through with rose and crimson from the 
setting sun, and men heed them not, though above their heads 
are more magnificent pictures, more beautiful sights than were 

* New York city. 



488 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

ever seen in any gallery of the world ; so, perpetually, night 
and day, there overhung the great metropolis of Corinth truths 
which were a thousand-fold more weighty, important, soul- 
searching and heart-stirring than anything that appealed to 
the senses and occupied the time of the people. And Paul 
says to them, li You live to the sound of the lute ; you dwell 
within sight of these. on-going blandishments of life; you think 
of what you shall eat and drink and wear ; you are wrapped 
up in your pleasures ; but these things are to be taken from 
you. You walk with your head prone, because you look down 
to matter. But we, followers of Christ, live by faith. We 
see these outward things without seeing them. There are 
things above that are of more importance than these are. 
They are invisible, intangible, and even inexplicable by us, 
because we are so imperfect. They are things which are eter- 
nal, which belong to God and to that which is god-like in 
man, and which are of transcendent importance. " So it was 
that he realized what to them was not very clear. 

The realm of faith, then, is that perceptive realm in 
which men think and feel by their higher nature — the 
reason, the affections, and the moral sentiments, as distin- 
guished from the domain of sense or materiality ; and living 
in that realm is, generically, living by faith. 

Now, my first remark, 'in view of this explanation, is that 
the principle of faith, while it is quickened, as all principles 
are, by Divine power, has roots which are natural. In other 
wordSj if you take men when they are born as savages you 
will find that their whole life lies connected with things 
which are present to them. Every savage thinks of that 
which he can see, or feel, or smell, or taste, or handle. He 
lives for to-day. If he has enough to eat and to drink, if he 
has a place to sleep, and if he has all that is necessary to keep 
him warm, he is satisfied. His life is in the present. It 
constitutes that which goes to make up the lowest form in 
which a human being can exist. It is but little above the 
life of the brute creation. 

The first step upward that the savage takes is impelled by 
suffering. He is afraid of to-morrow. What is to-morrow ? 
It is nothing. There is no such thing as to-morrow ; that is, 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH, 489 

you cannot weigh it, you cannot measure it, you cannot taste 
it, you cannot smell it, you cannot see it, you cannot handle 
it. It is an abstract idea of time. Probably the first idea 
that develops itself in the savage mind is that there is to be 
a period of time after a certain lapse of hours that is like that 
of to-day. He has been taught by suffering that he must 
prepare for to-morrow ; and there dawns on his animal nature 
the conception of something which the senses do not take 
hold of, — namely, another period of time. And by-and-by 
there is added to this the idea of weeks ; and to this the idea 
of months, and he works during the summer for the winter. 
To this is added the idea of years, and his plan includes not 
the present only, but the future. He organizes his work, not 
by what he can see, merely, but also by what he is going to 
see. And when from being a savage he rises to the condition 
of a barbarian, there are courage and ambition and a desire 
for reputation developed in him. And gradually he rises out 
of the realm of his lower, sensuous nature, up into the realm 
of things which he does not see, nor hear, nor tasce, nor 
smell, nor feel. At length he comes to the region where he 
relies on- invisible things. In other words, when a man is 
developed, his development is away from the body toward the 
spirit ; and as he goes from the body toward the spirit, his 
conceptions become less and less subject to the senses, and 
more and more allied to those things which belong to that 
realm which is beyond the senses. 

If you take, for instance, any single line of life, what do 
you mean by perfectness ? If you analyze it, and take a gen- 
eral idea of refinement, what is it but something that is 
carried from the coarse and obvious to something that is 
more subtle and fine ? What do you mean by fineness? You 
take a plain stick, and commence whittling it, and you bring 
it down to a point, and it is that part which almost vanishes, 
it is that part which well nigh melts into nothing, that is 
fine. And when you refine a thing, you take matter away 
from it ; you rasp it ; you sand-paper it ; you rub it down ; 
you take off its more obvious parts — the knots, the warts, the 
bark ; you divest it of its materiality. And when you speak 
of refinement in life, what do you mean but the subsidence 



490 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH, 

of the animal in man, and the predominance in him of the 
higher qualities of the mind ? In other words, if you analyze 
what we mean by civilization, it is not simply multiplication 
of power. It is that, but it is many other things besides. 
Refinement goes with civilization ; and by refinement men are 
working from animalism toward immortality ; from the visible 
toward the invisible ; from the coarse toward the fine ; from 
the ponderable toward the impalpable. And so, when we say 
of any man, " He is growing refined," what we mean by 
refinement is something that stands as the antithesis of cor- 
poreity, with its bone nature, its muscle nature, its animal 
nature. It is something that is in character, and that, in 
character, is growing higher and higher in scope and variety 
and invisibility. A great man cannot be understood by an 
ordinary man. Why ? Simply because he has in his mind 
faculties developed so high that their action is beyond any 
corresponding experience of those who are lower than he is. 

This, then, is the point which I was illustrating — namely, 
that faitii newly developed in an individual is not an absolute 
new divine creation. The preparation for it, the roots of it, 
its elements, are natural. It lies in human nature. It works 
from the basilar toward the superior — from the base toward 
the apex of the brain ; and he who lives by the higher facul- 
ties, he who is controlled by the upper man, dwells in the 
realm of faith ; while he who is governed by the under man, 
the outer man, the lower man, lives by sight. 

This is the apostle's philosophy, not mine. That is to 
say I do not originate it. I plagiarize. I get it from Paul. 
If it takes on modern phrase ; if it happens to fall in with 
the very much dreaded theory of evolution ; if it accords 
very nearly with the philosophies which are reigning now in 
the new schools that men so much fear, it is not my fault. 
There it is as Paul gave it. My own impression is that, if 
Paul had seen Darwin, he would have said to him, " All 
you want is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be a good 
Christian ;" and my impression is that, if Darwin had seen 
Paul, and heard him talk, he would have said to him, " All 
you want is to ground yourself a little more thoroughly in 
things as they are to be a splendid philosopher." I think my- 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 491 

self that there is more Darwinism in Saint Paul to-day than 
there is in Darwin, after all. I do not mean the school of 
Mr. Darwin — I mean himself ; for the disciples always turn 
to ridicule the master, by their extravagances. 

The line of evolution, then, as it has been set forth in 
modern philosophy, is from the animal upward ; and when 
the animal-man begins in this world, he is the meanest speci- 
men of an animal that ever was. There is nothing so low on 
earth as an animal man. I elo not mean after he is developed, 
but when he is first born. I mean you, every one of yon, in 
your fftst estate. You were. not born within a stone's throw 
of manhood. The beginnings of life in the human race are 
most insignificant. The idea of being ashamed to descend 
from a monkey ! Why, a monkey is nearer a man than you 
were when you started to be a man. A babe just born is 
next to nothing for a long time after it comes into the world, 
except for its possibilities, and as an object of parental love 
on account of its very helplessness and nothingness. When a 
fly is born it bursts into a perfect thing, and is as good a fly 
at the first as at the last ; but the law says that a man is not 
born till he is twenty-one years of age. The creature that is 
slowest being born in the universe is man. He works up 
through stage after stage, developing slowly, and still more 
slowly unfolding ; and upon the animal comes the social ; 
and, by gradual evolution, upon the social qualties comes 
reason ; and, by continuous growth, upon reason come the 
moral faculties ; and upon the moral faculties come the 
spiritual instincts and powers. And as they are the highest, 
so they are the slowest, and they are the last. 

Now, that being the existing modern view of the evolution 
of man, as he is born and goes on through these stages in 
life, what is the difference between it and the Apostle's view ? 
We believe that men are born of the flesh, and that they are 
to be developed out of the flesh, step by step, into the higher 
realm, and that at last they are to come by development into 
the spiritual condition ; and what is this spiritual condition 
but that which Paul means by the state of faith, or that state 
which we appreciate through the operation of the higher 
faculties ? Why does it not agree with the more recent 



492 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

development theories of human life ? It is corroborated by 
fact. I do not mean Darwinism, but this theory : that man 
develops first as an animal, and works toward something 
higher and higher, until he gets into a state where the life- 
forces are from the higher realm ; and then he has become a 
child of God, a spiritual creature ; and he lives by faith, or 
spirit-seeing ; by internal cognition ; by moral intuitions and 
sentiments ; and by reason, acting in its higher sphere, and 
on its loftier plane. * 

If these views be correct, I remark, a religious faith 
is only an extension, a consummation, of that which whole- 
some education develops. Wnen, therefore, we are com- 
manded to have faith, it is not to be interpreted, as too often 
men have thought they must interpret it, as calling upon a 
man to believe unproved things. Faith, as the old medieval 
church interprets it, is this : Open your mouth wide and 
swallow. That is faith, without deglutition or tasting. The 
priest says, ee Here are the things which the church has found 
out ; God has told the church these things, and he cannot 
make any mistakes ; and no matter how strange they look to 
you, open your mouth and swallow them, and' that will be 
faith." Believing that things are true which every part of 
you instinctively feels are not true — that has been taught to 
be faith. Men are told that in eating bread, they eat the 
real flesh of Christ, and that in drinking wine, they drink 
the actual blood of Christ. They are taught that for eighteen 
hundred years the world has been eating up and drinking the 
flesh and blood of Christ ; and that he is being eaten at the 
same time all around the world ; and that there is a perpet- 
ual increase and distribution of flesh and blood going on 
everywhere. They are not taught that bread and wine are 
elements which resemble and are to be regarded as symboliz- 
ing flesh and blood, but that they are the flesh and blood of 
the actual living God. And although every one of men's 
senses go against this idea and reject it, yet they are told to 
take it, because the church says it is true. So faith is made 
to mean, Accept what the church teaches. 

That may be one form of faith ; but as a definition of 
faith, how inadequate it is ! Faith is the use of the reason, and 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAIT&. 493 

not the abuse of it. Faith is the employment of reason along 
the line of analogy, not the suppression of it. It is the 
use of reason, not as the brute uses it, not as the savage 
uses it, not as the semi-civilized man uses it, nor as the 
civilized man uses it on the lower plane : it is the use 
of reason instructed and refined along the higher develop- 
ments of humanity to which noble men aspire. All that 
constitutes heroic manhood in mankind, working in the 
direction of the most subtle and glorious reality — that is 
faith ; and there is no antithesis between faith and reason. 
In material facts the senses and the reason act together, the 
priest or the church to the contrary, notwithstanding. If 
they tell you that one is three, or that three are one, it is a 
lie in a mathematical sense ; but there may be a sense in 
which it is not a lie. 

For example, take the very illustration that will be sug- 
gested to your minds — the trinity. People say it is absurd 
to talk about there being three in one, and one in three. 
In the material sense it is. But when an animal in the 
lowest polyp state is born, it is just simple. If you take 
one of these sunfish, what is it ? It has no head and no 
nervous system. It is a mass with just an opening for food 
to go in at, and a vent for it to pass out at. That is the 
whole of it. Little by little you trace up the development 
of that creature, and by-and-by there is a film that runs 
through it — a nerve ; and that nerve, when it gets a little 
higher, begins to branch ; and by-and-by the creatures have 
a nervous system that is more or less complex ; and at last 
appears a head ; and the moment the animal has a head it has 
passed out of a lower state into a higher, toward the verte- 
brate state ; and finally it is developed into the animal king- 
dom ; and going through that the line of development ap- 
pears in the human kingdom, growing more and more com- 
plicated. Although, in the primary creature, there is but one 
single organ, and, as it were, the whole of it is that organ, 
and it is so simple that if you cut it in two it is two complete 
creatures ; yet, when you come to man there is in him variety 
upon variety, and differentiation after differentiation ; and he 
represents all the gradations of animal life that are below 



494 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

him. He has all the animal instincts in one line, all the 
social qualities in another line ; and all the intellectual forces 
in another line. They are scattered through him. They are 
grouped together in him. He has over and above this, the 
breath of God, the spiritual life, that is in him. And all 
these are one. There are manifold elements in one man. 
There are various functions which he carries on. So that in 
this higher state we see groups of faculties, multiform and 
various, are brought together to constitute unity. And thus, 
rising to still superior realms, we may find that instead of 
mere faculties, it is 'personalities which constitute unity. 
Hence, even according to our own observation of analogies, it 
is not absurd to say that in the spiritual kingdom three may 
constitute one, and One may have three separate Personali- 
ties. It is right in the line of the analogy of development 
according to the best schools. 

When, therefore, a man believes in the realm of sense 
things that are contradicted by nature and by experience, it 
is not faith but credulity. To believe a thing contrary to the 
evidence which is appropriate to it is to be piteously super- 
stitious — it is to sell one's self. And as to my saying that you 
must ignore your beliefs to be religious, and accept things 
which are apparently not so, I do no such thing. I lay on 
every man the obligation of believing toward evidence. I say 
in matters of belief. li Faith is the evidence of things not 
seen." 

It is not, then, a kind of recumbency of virtue ; it is not 
a rude submission to authority ; it is not assuming to be true 
what everything in you says is not true ; it is a normal action 
of man's reason in reference to things which lie above the 
senses, where imagination dwells, where sentiment dwells, 
where the affections dwell, and where the spiritual elements 
dwell. Faith and reason never come into collision. 

But it may be said, i( Do not the truths of sense often 
contradict the alleged truths of the spirit ?" They may be 
made to do so ; but in the end there never will be any contra- 
diction between truths derived from the lower forms of na- 
ture and truths derived from its higher forms. Difference is 
not contradiction. Variation is not oppugnancy. 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 495 

In the early stages of knowledge we see as through a glass 
darkly, even in respect to physical things. The great schools 
that are at work tickling the ribs of nature ; the schools that 
are digging deep or searching far for hidden truths, or that 
bring truths to light by the almost creative power of the mi- 
croscope — all these schools are as yet in their infancy. Vast 
as has been their advance, it is premature to say that the lower 
forms of nature are contradictory to its higher forms. We 
see all things as through a glass, darkly — the things of the 
lower as well as those of the upper realm. 

How few there are who reason at all upon, religious experi- 
ences ! How few are competent to analyze these experiences ! 
How few, in teaching, are able to give correct solutions to 
psychological questions ! In this state of the world men are 
not in a condition to set in battle array the senses against the 
spirit. There may be successive developments yet to be gone 
through, but they are in harmony with each other. There 
may be steps to be taken, but they are not steps which should 
lead one away from the other. There may be stages to be 
passed through, but they are stages of successive growth and 
development. 

Faith, then, is not mysterious. It is not antagonistic to 
reason, nor is it antithetical to it. It is normal and natural 
in the best sense of the term nature. It is designed that men 
should be developed and should come to faith by a far higher 
use of reason than any that belongs to their earlier estate. 

When, then, we are called upon, in the Word of G-od, to 
" live by faith, and not by sight," we are not called to trans- 
form ourselves in any sense of losing our old nature and tak- 
ing on a new one : we are called to pass to a higher use of> 
that which has become familiar. Men's business, their pleas- 
ure, their reasoning, are all tending in the same direction ; 
and religious faith is only the final or fuller development of 
that which has its beginnings in the lower walks of life. It 
is the blossom and the fruit of that of which other things are 
the stalk. And to live a life of faith is not anything that 
demands such an addition to our faculties, or such a taking 
of our faculties out of the natural line of cause and effect, as 
to lead us to say, " We have something given to us or some- 



496 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

thing taken from us ;" it is to use aright that which G-od has 
given to all the race. 

I put my watch in the hand of an ignorant boy, and he 
opens it to the regulator, and unscrews the balance-wheel, 
and it runs wild. Then he screws it up again, ignorantly, 
and it runs wild in another direction : He tinkers with this 
wheel, and with that wheel, and finally it will not run at all. 
Then it starts again, and runs with a pulsating, irregular 
movement. So it keeps stopping and running ; and he can- 
not tell why. At last he says, "That watch is totally de- 
praved. There is not a wheel in it that is good for anything. 
The main-spring and everything about it is bad. Look at 
it : it fools me every hour of the day." Then I carry it to a 
horologer. He takes out every one of the wheels, cleans 
the rust off from them, and puts them all back in their places 
again. The main-spring, now free from its rust and hin- 
drances of dust and dirt he puts back in its place. Then he 
turns the regulator ; and by a series of trials he gets the watch 
exactly adjusted. In his hands it begins to keep very good 
time. Still he watches it, screwing up the balance-wheel, or 
relaxing it, according as the watch runs too fast or too slow ; 
and at last he gets it so regulated that it runs for years with 
only a variation of seconds. It is the same watch after the 
horologer has done with it that it was when the ignorant 
boy got through with it ; the dial-plate is the same, the point- 
ers are the same, and all the wheels are the same ; but it is 
proper to say that it is a different watch. Function makes 
difference as well as structure. 

Now, when men are irregular ; when all their faculties are 
out of proportion ; when they are not properly wound up ; 
when they are not regulated right, we say that they are 
depraved, that they are out of order, and if you can 
bring anything to bear upon them which shall keep all 
things in their places — the social instincts, the moral senti- 
ments and the spiritual elements — under the divine influ- 
ence and pressure, they are new men. I do not mean that 
there is a new reason, that there is a new conscience, and that 
there are new affections, actually : I simply mean that the 
reason, the conscience and the affections are brought into 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 497 

such harmonious arrangement and play in life, that the result 
is absolutely different from what it was, and grander than it 
was, before, and that they are new men in Christ Jesus. 

Well, I can give you au illustration of it. Thomas is a 
farmer. He was born of very poor parents — charcoal-burners 
— up in the mountains. He never went away from home. 
He is a great strong boy, with a rugged appetite. When he 
is eighteen or nineteen years of age, he goes down in the lower 
country. There people laugh at him, and tilke him for a 
gawky. He is uncouth in his appearance. He never thought 
of combing his hair, and he is indifferent about his clothes. 
He hires out on a farm. The man who employs him doubts 
whether it is safe to trust a pig under his care. t But he has 
a rough stability ; he proves to be faithful though he is slow ; 
and little by little he comes up in life. With more intelli- 
gent people, there begins to be a brightening look in his face. 
After two or three years, during which he is a servant and 
scullion, he comes to be a "hired man." And there is a good 
deal in him. It has been dormant ; it has never had any 
stimulus or education ; he is yet rough and coarse ; and his 
pleasures are somewhat low. But it comes to pass that in 
the third year his master's daughter, most comely and most 
gentle, returns home, and dawns on him. He never wor- 
shiped before, and never felt so helpless. !N~ever before did 
he feel so awkward, or, indeed, know what it was to be awk- 
ward. He would give all the world if he knew how to go into 
a room, and what to do with his hands. He would give 
anything if he could only sit down right, and get up right. 
His very shoes begin to look clumsy to him. Everything in 
his life is changed. When he goes out in the morning he goes 
with a kind of heaviness. There is something in the house 
that all the time bothers him. He does not know what is the 
matter with him ; but he knows one thing, and everybody 
else knows it — that his hair is combed every day ; that his 
coat is brushed ; that when he comes from work he does not 
like his old clothes ; that he gets on some better ones ; and 
that on Sunday there are many things which indicate that 
some taste is being developed in him. He goes on growing 
inside and improving outside all through the year. And at last, 



498 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

in the fourth year, in one of those tremendous hours of acci- 
dent, it all comes out, and he says the fatal words — and is not 
repelled. He stands trembling in every limb and nerve of his 
being. Not the resurrection trump will so stir a man, me- 
thinks, as when all his life is stirred in him by love. And 
now, the silence under the kindly look ; the very running 
away for fear of hearing more ; the not unkind meeting ; all 
those things that do so stir up the life — how they have 
aroused everything in him ! He has five men's strength. Go 
with him and see him lift the end of that log — a thing which 
seemed impossible before. How he will swing it round ! Go 
with him to the wrestling match or the leaping match, and 
see what power and vim there is in him, body and soul. Be- 
fore he did not care to go to church, but now you cannot 
keep him away from church. Before he did not care for read- 
ing ; he went to sleep over books ; but now he has no trouble 
in keeping wide awake, and he wants to read. He takes pains 
to put himself where he can see something of life. He goes 
to town, not for the sake of riding in a wagon, but to see how 
people act and live. There is far more in him than anybody 
ever thought of there being. There are things going on in 
his soul-chamber of which those who have known him never 
had a suspicion. 

So out of that one affection comes education and develop- 
ment. And when he comes to be an old man, and his hair is 
almost gone, and the thin white locks hang down his neck, 
he turns to his grandchildren, and weeps as he talks, and 
says, " Oh, my children, you never will know what a woman 
she was ; God has taken her to heaven ; but if I ever have 
been anything in this world, I owe it to her. From her has 
come everything." 

Does he mean by this that he got his bones from her ? 
Does he mean that she gave him his muscles ? Does he mean 
that anything came from her to him but inspiration, power, 
influence ? And did she not make him a new man — yea, 
twice as much a man as he would have been without her 
ministration ? 

Why should we go about after a rude and clumsy philoso- 
phy, when upon the soul is thrown a flood of light from the 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 499 

realm of immortality, and when there rises oat of the super- 
stitious fears and images which cloud men's minds the true 
conception of God in Christ Jesus, the merciful and loving 
One who is Chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely ? 
When there dawns upon the human soul a conception of su- 
pernal grandeur in power and illumination in wisdom — a con- 
ception of that Nature whose love is most exquisite, passing 
the love of woman, passing a lover's love, passing the love of 
a mother, in length and breadth and intensity ; when from 
the heavens above and around there comes to a human soul 
the conception that there is a Being with soul attributes, and 
the soul knows it, and is waked by it, as the clod knows how 
to wake when the sun comes ; when the human soul, having 
gained such a conception of God, begins to move, and to be 
filled and intensified by hope and faith and love, and to be 
wound up and kept in order thereby ; when in this way God's 
love through Jesus Christ comes into the soul — then that soul 
is born again, recreated, without anything being added to it, 
simply by having that which belongs to it regulated, trained, 
stimulated, washed, and made in spiritual things effluent and 
beautiful as angels are. 

When we come to have this conception we shall be living 
by sentiment, by faith, by love. We shall no longer be living 
by the mouth ; by the ear ; by the eye ; by the hand, or by 
the sense of smell. We shall be living by the higher facul- 
ties. And so we shall " walk by faith, and not by sight." 

You will go through the City of New York to-morrow, 
and bear burdens, and hear sounds, and your mind will be 
absorbed with these things, and your life will be in them ; 
but you will leave behind you a home that is dearer to you 
than the shop. Nay, for that alone has the shop or the 
store or the office any value. It is for wife and children and 
friends that you labor. And the occupations and distrac- 
tions and excitements of the day do not take away from you 
the influence of home — that supremest earthly influence of 
your life which is working upon you. 

A faint emblem this is of that higher home where my 
father is, where my mother is, where my brother is, where 
my children are, and where I shall be also. It is not far off. 



500 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

I hear its sounds sometimes. I feel its influence often. I am 
touched with its warmth. I am filled and thrilled with its 
joy. I believe in it. I know that "there remaineth a rest 
for the people of God." Storms drive us toward it. The 
thunder and the crash of earthly discordances are, after all, 
but the background on which there shall be the sweet melo- 
dies of the heavenly life. I live by hope, by faith. It lifts 
one up. It carries one over obstacles. With it we pass 
streams unbridged, and ford streams without bottom. We 
are borne as on angel wings. We live u as seeing Him who 
is invisible." How blessed is this upper life ! How blessed is 
the life which men live by their higher nature, which touches 
the divine, which interprets the divine, and which leads unto 
the divine, so that at last we shall stand in Zion and see God ! 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 501 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

Thou that dwellest in light, and hast ail knowledge and all joy ; 
tnou to whom all things come in their ripeness and in their beauty ; 
thou that art the center of the wide-lying universe, beholding the 
steps of unfolding afar off, rude and imperfect, and yet drawing all 
things steadfastly upward in more and more perfect circles toward 
blessedness and immortality — to thee we come; and we thank thee 
that upon us has dawned the knowledge of God ; that for us there is a 
realm iu visible ; and that for us there is a circuit where our thoughts 
may fly and quite leave behind us material things, things of time and 
of sense; and that we may behold without seeing; that we may by 
faith discern the invisible, and dwell therein, and find in thee recov- 
ery from the disasters of outward life, joy when troubles scowl with- 
out on every side, rest in the midst of tumult, acceptance in the 
midst of rejection, purity, and truth, and rest for the innermost 
spirit. 

We rejoice that thou art discerned by so many who, struggling in 
twilight, look for thee, but do not see thee as thou art. We are, as 
best we may, helping ourselves with all images, and all imaginations, 
and all experiences, to reach in our minds to some conception of thy 
goodness, and of thy majesty ; but there shall come a time when we 
shall see thee as thou art, with no clouds, no misconceptions, nothing 
wrong in our teaching. We shall stand in thy presence, and we shall 
know as we are known. As they that love, when at last there comes 
the hour .of full disclosure, interchange their lives, and are known to 
each other, so there shall come a day when we shall be in thy pres- 
ence perfectly known of thee, and know as we are known. We re- 
joice in the thought of that day. We rejoice in it though we do not 
yet attain to any conception of it. We rejoice that there are so many 
who are rising to it. 

Indeed, for thy children death has lost its terror. How art thou 
dismissing out of pain and anguish those who would fain be at rest ! 
Though there be many who walk in life as in a prison-house, and long 
for the day of their departure, yet we rejoice that the bands are loos- 
ening On every side, and that one goes, and another, and another. 
How many fly from the storm before it strikes them, and hide them- 
selves in celestial fields as birds out of the meadows fly into the woods 
before the storm comes! How many little ones are with thee upon 
whom tbe blast of life does not come, that flew away and are at rest! 
How many are there who go forth before ever they have been whelm- 
ed in trouble, or snared in guilt, or obliged to work out their own 
salvation with fear and trembling! How many go forth from under 
the burdens of life as slaves, who, being called from out of the field, 
lay down their tasks, and go forth into liberty! 

How many are there upon whom the yoke was hard for the time 
being, and the burden was heavy to be borne, but whom thou didst 
call to let go, and who are at rest with thee ! How full is the heaven- 
ly land! and how 'rich it is becoming to our thought! How many 



502 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

our hearts follow there! How many that are there are as a part of 
us, they having woven their life into ours ! How many are there that 
in early life led us by the hand and instructed us, and warmed us into 
life, and taught us how to discern good from evil, and are with thee, 
and yet are not separated from us. By all the power of love, by all 
the force of habit, by all the yearnings of the soul, and by all the 
kindlings of imagination, we search them out, and will not let them 
go. They are ours — for those whom we love are ours. With thee 
they are blessed — and we fain would know what their blessedness is ; 
if they forget their low estate; if they cast off the memory of earth, 
as plants that once have sprouted. We wonder whether we shall know 
them, and be known by them. We wonder what all the estate of 
blessedness shall be in the heavenly land. But no voice comes to tell 
us. 

All we know is, that there is blessedness beyond comparison of 
any earthly experience of flesh and blood ; that all temptations which 
have come to us through flesh and blood, shall cease; that we shall be 
as the angels of God, spirits; and that only those things which take 
hold of the spirit shall have power with us. We shall be in thy pres- 
ence ; and the whole atmosphere will be full of inspiration and inspir- 
iting influence. When we have passed from thee to the spirit, and 
become sons of God, we shall dwell with God, and behold his face, and 
be forever filled with joy unspeakable and full of glory. And so, 
though we cannot see thee, we stand and look. As men look toward 
the rising sun, before it has come up, and know where its coming is, 
and rejoice in the twilight that is dawning upon the mountains; so 
we look away to the heavenly land. We cannot discern it, nor take 
the measure of it, nor estimate its employments, nor know the con- 
dition of those who are translated into the spirit life ; but we rejoice 
to discern the great brightness that is there. All our thoughts kindle ; 
and we strive, and yearn ; and it seems as if our wings would spread 
themselves, and we might fly away and be at rest. 

Not that we are discontented with our allotments in life, nor that 
we would be unclothed. We are content to bear as long as thou dost 
wish it. Burdens and trials, if sent by thee, are our pleasures. We 
stand in our place to do our work, and wait for the coming of our 
Lord. Not that we would leave thy work. Not that poverty is not 
tolerable, nor that cares and troubles are not bearable. But there is 
something better; and aspiration, yearning, all that which thou hast 
planted in us by thy love, blessed Saviour, by thy spiritual light and 
ministration and holiness, reaches out for disclosure and power. It is 
not that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon. It is not that we 
would be less here, but more there, that we may partake of the full- 
ness of manhood in Christ Jesus. 

We pray, O Lord, that thou wilt grant thy blessing, this morning, 
to thy servants that are gathered together here. We pray that they 
may have that ministration of spirit which is in thy view best for 
them. Comfort them in body ; and heal them if they be sick or weak. 
Lift upon them the light of thy countenance. Give them the joy of 
thy salvation inwardly. 

We pray that thou wilt bless all the families that are represented 
here. Bring into every household light and gladness. Help all those 



THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 503 

who love each other, by love to strive for purity and wisdom, and for 
strength therein. 

We pray that thou wilt grant the Spirit of Christ unto all those 
who labor, and are seeking to enlighten their fellow men, the outcast, 
the poor and the neglected ; aud may they go forth not alone carry- 
ing the word of his history, but breathing his gentleness, his loving- 
ness, his self-sacrifice, his meekness, his humility ; so that they may 
make Christ known, not by their lip, but by their spirit. 

And may thy blessing rest upon this whole land; upon all its 
churches ; upon all the ministers that preach the tidings of salvation ; 
upon all its institutions of learning ; and upon its governments. 

Bless, we pray thee, the President of these United States, and those 
who are joined with him in authority ; and give them wisdom and 
divine direction. Bless the Congress assembled ; the Governors 
and Legislatures of the different States; all magistrates and judges 
and officers. We pray that they may be clothed with the spirit of Jesus, 
and with truth. And may this people be obedient, God-fearing and 
law-abiding. 

We pray that those evils of passion, and appetite, and avarice, and 
wantoness, and unruly desire, may be suppressed or restrained; 
and that more and more there may be justice, and truth, and purity, 
and fidelity, and piety. Unite thy people in this blessed work. May 
they not vex each other. Mr.y they not look with suspicion upon things 
that are not of themselves. May we rejoice in all the workmen whom 
thou dost send forth in thy providence, whether they be within or 
without the church, and in all influences which ameliorate the con- 
dition of men. May we have the largeness of Christ himself, and see 
that the field is the world, and that all things whatsoever that are 
doing good are God's ministers, and are working together for good. 

We pray that thou wilt bless all nations, with us. And grant that 
the day may speedily come when the whole world shall see thy 
salvation. 

And to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, shall be praises ever- 
more. Amen. 



-♦-* 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Our Father, we pray that thou wilt give us more of thyself — more 
of thy power. Why. dost thou hide thy face ? Thou dost not. For as 
the ground calls out to the sun, saying, Why am I dark? when 
shadows rise on it, and the sun replies by pouring abroad unstinted 
universal light; so dost thou give forth thyself; and if there be dark- 
ness, it is in us, and not in thee. Be pleased to help us dissipate dark- 
ness. Thou that art Light, come to us ; for we need light. Thou that 
art Life, fill up in us that which is dead, and give power and sensibility 
to that which is dull, that we may have fullness of life ; that that part 
of our nature which is so little inspired may beat with full pulsation. 

O grant that we may have some such sense of purity, of fidelity, 
of piety, of mercy, of self-sacrifice, of helpfulness, of gentleness, of 



504 THE NATURALNESS OF FAITH. 

meekness and of long-suffering patience, that we may interpret the 
nature of God. 

We ask for these things, not because they will make us apparel for 
goodly presentation : we ask them that by them we may come to some 
interpretation of thee : that we may see God ; and that we may re- 
alize what thou dost mean by saying, Blessed are the pure in heart, 
for they shall God. 

Grant, while we are burdened with toil, and while we are in bondage 
in many things, and while we are striving still in a lower way of 
life, that there may be a crystal dome opened in us through which we 
may see the stars ; through which we may behold the heavens. Let 
us not be endungeoned evermore in imperfection and in sins. Give 
us the power of realizing more, of feeling more, of that which belongs 
to the spiritual nature. We are thine. We are on the way to glori- 
fication. Behold us, God! We are thy children. We have the 
audacity of love. We say to thee, Cast us not away; forget us not; 
tread us not down in the greatness of thy strength. This it is to be 
great — to take care of the weak ; and take care of us, poor, lean, self- 
indulgent, complaining, uncourageous, wavering creatures. All that 
is poor we are; yet thrust us not away. What would become of 
babes if their mothers were to throw them away? and what would 
become of us, if thou wert not Father to us? Take us in the arms of 
thy grace; and as we are borne from day to day, interpret to us thy 
nature, even if it be but dimly and faintly. As the sound of music 
afar off, may we hear thy voice speaking to us, and saying to us, at 
last, What I do now, ye know not ; but ye shall know hereafter. 
May we lay aside doubt and fear and hesitation, and follow on to 
know the Lord. And when we shall know thee as thou art, in the 
glory of thy habitation, and shall feel that we are recognized as the 
children of God, we will cast our crowns before thee, and say, Not 
unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name, be the praise, forever and 
ever. Amen. 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 



11 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in neces- 
sities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake : for when I am 
weak, then am I strong."— 2 Cor. xii., 10. 



Well, if Paul took pleasure in these things, he must have 
had a great deal of happiness while he lived ; and if these are 
sources of pleasure in this world, it must he a very merry 
world ! There have heen infirmities and reproaches and 
necessities and persecutions and distresses enough to make 
all creation happy if they are the sources of happiness. 

No person that has critical sensibility fails to discern the dif- 
ference between the teaching of our Master when he was in the 
Province of Galilee, and his teaching after he came to Jerusa- 
lem, in the last weeks of his life. Among the peasantry and 
the plain people of Galilee, he employed one line of discourse ; 
and in the temple, before educated men, he employed another 
and a very much higher line, showing that he adapted him- 
self to the conditions which he severally met. No man can 
read the Apostle's writings, and not discern the same thing. 
When he was among the Greeks, although he could not shake 
off the Hebrew genius, yet, after all, he adapted himself to 
their morals, to their tastes, to their intellectual condition, 
and to their habit of thought. In both of his letters to the 
Corinthians it is evident that he felt the Greek atmosphere. 

Sunday Morning, February 15, 1874. "Lesson: 1 Cor. i. 17-31; 2. 1-15. Hymns: 
Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 346, 1235, " Shining Shore." 



508 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

He resisted it, and he adopted it. In these letters, more than 
in any other of his writings, he yielded so as to give, a philo- 
sophical cast to his thoughts. I mean hy a philosophical cast 
that which comes from taking a purely intellectual stand- 
point. In these two letters to the Corinthians, more than 
anywhere else, you find v r hat may be called Paul's philosophy 
of the human mind. Only here does he develop what may 
be called Pauline psychology. It was by this development 
that he resisted the Greek influence. He resisted reasoning 
by reasoning. 

Now, the Greek miu 1 lived by the senses first, and almost 
universally. Higher than that, secondly, the Greek mind 
lived by reason in its relations to imaginative matter, or mat- 
ter touched by the sense of the beautiful. Thirdly, the Greek 
mind lived by the power of pure intellectual reason. There 
were these gradations. All of them are essentially earthy. 
Therefore, the whole Greek mind was of this world, worldly, 
in the estimation of the apostle. 

The Greek mind did not develop spirituality. As between 
genius that consists in rare and 1 ^rge intellectual intuitions 
and powers, and genius which consists in great, noble or un- 
common dispositions, the Greeks believed in the intellectual 
manhood of men. Their intellect, although working very 
high, never went higher than things seen and visible ; that is, 
as I might say, they never cut the connection between the 
root and the topmost leaf. Their thought, h. gh as it went, 
smelt of the earth still. 

In its highest reach, then, it was worldly. It carried with 
it, through and through, the earth element — not the divine 
element ; not the influence of the world to come ; not the 
quality of moral power. The Greeks put manhood either in 
that power which resided in a cultivated, killful, beautified, 
physical development — in other words, in the athlete ; or, in 
a developed, educated, inward power which was intellectual, 
fine, comprehensive, exquisitely subtle. They never put the 
thought of manhood in disposition— in the number, depth, and 
combination of feelings in distinction from thought-power. 
And it was precisely here that the Apostle Paul met them. He 
was the advocate of the heart, as contradistinguished from the 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 509 

head. Paul's key-note was this — that manhood resided in the 
moral dispositions of men. When everything else had failed, 
when all knowledge had passed away, when the speaking of lan- 
guages, the prophesying, the teaching, the arguing was done ; 
when even the dim vision ceased ; when we saw face to face, 
and knew as we were known, all the transient "being swept 
aside — then three things would still abide, and would be 
positive, certain and universal ; and these three things were 
— what ? Eeason, genius, imagination ? No ; faith, hope, 
love. Those were the three things that death had no power 
over, and that would emerge in the radiance of the upper 
sphere, and there exist through all eternity. Manhood, with 
the apostle, consisted in glorious emotive dispositions. Every- 
thing else that was given to man was, in his estimation, an 
instrument. That is, these were the man, and the other 
things were his hands. Paul never despised reasoning. It 
sometimes seems as though he despised it ; but it is only as a 
man despises a servant who is in his master's chair. He likes 
the servant well enough, but wants him in his own place. 
Paul did not despise reasoning ; and there was no more 
masterly reasoning than his, considering the time in which 
he lived, considering the purposes which he had in view, and 
considering the instruments which he employed. His argu- 
mentation is correct if you do not press it too narrowly or too 
closely. It is the vice of almost all interpreters of the Bible 
to attempt to reduce to scientific systems ideas that belong to 
the higher range of thought. 

Paul held to two things. You will recollect how, in the 
seventh chapter of Romans, he develops his two-nature idea : 

" We know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under 
sin. For that -which I do I allow not; for what I would, that I do 
not ; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do that which I would 
not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now, then, it is no more 
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me." 

In other words, he said : "I have two natures. I have a 
flesh nature, an outside nature, and that keeps sinning ; and 
then I have another nature — an inside, a spirit nature — and 
that does not like sinning ; and with my heart-power, my 
conscience-power, my love-power, with the power of the di- 



510 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

vine element that is in me, I look and see what this body out- 
side, which clothes me, is trying to do. And here are two Is 
that are fighting. The inside I is arrayed against the outside 
I ; and the outside has the advantage." 

Paul was like a child on a very vicious horse, that ran 
away with him, though he did not want to be run away 
with. He held him in with all his might, but he could not 
stop him. 

Paul goes on to say : 

" I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing; 
for to will is present with me ; but how to perform that which is good, 
I find not. For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I 
would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I 
that do it." 

That is to say, i( My real manhood, the essential I, which 
I regard as Paul — that I which shall not die, and which shall 
appear unto the resurrection, and triumph through the eter- 
nal — that I does not do the evil. It is the base I, it is the 
animal I, that does it." 

This two-root notion of Paul's is the key-note to his phi- 
losophy. The one nature is visible and the other is invisible ; 
the one is developed by the material globe and its circum- 
stances, and the other is developed by the schooling of divine 
grace. 

Now, if this be manhood ; if this be the point of value ; 
if this be the end to be sought in man's development ; if this 
spiritual, dispositional, interior manhood is the center of his 
being, then you will begin to understand why it is that he 
is strong when he is weak. It is when the under-Paul is 
weak that the upper-Paul gets strong. It is when the 
outside-Paul is under reproaches and suffering that the inside- 
Paul gets a chance to assert itself. It is when the flesh -life, 
the dropping, the dying part is powerless, that the undying 
part, that part which is of Glod, that part which is in affilia- 
tion, in sympathy, and in communion with the Divine, and 
that shall mingle therewith without losing its identity, shall 
triumph. 

As when the keeper is away, and the door is open, the pris- 
oner can go out and take the sun and air, but when the keeper 
comes back, the prisoner is sent to his dungeon again ; so, 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 511 

when the imprisoning body goes out, the enclosed Paul 
comes forth and rejoices itself in light and freedom, but when 
that body comes back, the temporarily released Paul is im- 
prisoned once more. 

We are prepared, then, to interpret the opening of the 
First Epistle to the Corinthians which I read to you, where 
Paul seems to rail at the intellect and at Greek philosophy, and 
to laud as wonderful and glorious that inward disposition in 
which inheres true manhood. His language is not absolute, 
but relative. It does not undervalue the Greek mind in its 
own sphere, and for its own purposes. It assumes, without 
saying so, that the Greek mind had taken that to bo a true 
manhood which was only secondary, auxiliary, and, as it were, 
incidental — in other words, that it had taken the leaves for 
the blossoms. 

You will observe why it is, therefore, that he so insists, 
in t*hat opening passage, on what seems strange to many, 
where he says, " I determined not to know anything among 
you save Christ." It is as if he had said, " I determined not 
to employ any power among you, not to rely upon any 
strength in your midst, except that of Christ." He used the 
word know in the sense in which a man knows his artillery, 
his cavalry, or his army. " I determined not to exert any 
power among you except that which is derived from Christ. " 
And what is the most astonishing part of his declaration is 
this : " I did not mean, even, to know him as a magazine of 
power, because he was a Jew, or because he could work mira- 
cles, or because ho raised men from the dead ; I determined 
to know him in his ignominy ; in that attitude and under 
that experience which made him the scoff of the Jews and the 
derision of the Greeks. I determined to know him, and him 
crucified" Why ? That their faith should not stand in the 
visible in men ; that there should be a power exerted from 
Christ's overthrow, his suffering, and his death, that should 
increase the moral stock that lies back of the external intel- 
lection of men. 

We may now see what it is that Paul considered to be 
strength, and what he considered to be weakness. Whatever 
shuts up, diminishes, or destroys the moral qualities which 



512 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

center around the great divine element of love, no matter 
how valuable it may be for worldly purposes or secondary 
ends, is, in the light of true manhood, an element of weak- 
ness. So that it often happens that that which is strength in 
one relation becomes weakness in another relation. 

If a man be but a skeleton, and begin to take on flesh, 
men congratulate him ; but when a man has flesh in super- 
abundance, and begins to grow so corpulent that his eyes 
are closed and his senses are more or less obscured and 
enveloped, men do not then regard him as particularly fortu- 
nate. Up to a certain point flesh helps, but beyond that 
point it hinders. There are thousands of things in this world 
which in a lower auxilliary place are advantageous, but which 
if they exist to such an extent that they shut up the higher 
qualities, or leave them undeveloped, are weaknesses and are 
injurious. 

When you come down in the morning you find that the 
door of your canary-bird cage has been left open ; of course 
nobody did it, but it is open, and the bird is gone ; and it 
being summer, and the windows being raised, it is effectually 
gone. Now, your idea of that open cage and the bird's idea 
of it are very different indeed. And so it is with mora] 
qualities. Of the thing which opens and lets out of a man 
courage and hope, and gives them a chance to expand, by in- 
spiration and necessity, the inward man says, "Ah ! that was 
my strength ; that was my glory," and the outward man says 
of it, " Oh ! that was your misfortune ; that was your weak- 
ness." The thing which makes men look on you and say, 
" He has got to go down from his high place ; he has lost his 
standing ; people will not talk about him as they have done ; 
he will have to walk humbly now M — that, instead of being 
your misfortune, is a blessing to you. Yes, you will have to 
walk humbly ; and that is the beauty of it. Walking humbly 
you are more a man than you were when you walked proudly. 
To one sort of mind the loss of worldly position is diminu- 
tion ; but to a higher and nobler spirit it is coronation for 
the inward man. The outward man diminishes, but the in- 
ward man increases. Paul says : 

"Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 513 

day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, 
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which 
are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the 
things which are not seen are eternal." 

Keal manhood, according to Paul's idea, is developed by 
the battering of the outward or flesh man. He considered 
that whatever diminished the outward man built up the in- 
ward man. He regarded as strength to his disciples whatever 
thing put them upon the necessity of living by their interior.; 
by their moral intuitions ; by their imagination working in 
connection wiuh religious things. Whatever losses of goods, 
or friends, or affections, or successes, or occupations, drove 
men to the higher realm which was in themselves, the world 
would say were reproaches, misfortunes, infirmities, depriva- 
tions ; but God would say of them, since he. sees what comes 
of them, that they are opportunities ; that they are transfigu- 
rations; that they are augmentations. Interior manhood 
grows while the outward man diminishes. 

And so Paul's infirmities were such as would generally be 
regarded as misfortunes. It is not pleasant for a man to be, 
as Paul was, of contemptible appearance, and to know it. It 
does not matter whether a r an is handsome or homely if he 
thinks he is handsome ; but *.t makes a great deal of differ- 
ence when a man has intense sensibility, to know that he ie 
uncomely. Paul's nature was as sensitive as an aeolian harp. 
Not a breeze that would stir an aspen leaf but made him 
quiver. All through his letters we see that everything he 
thought of in Heaven, on earth, or in hell, he thought of from 
the standpoint of his own personal feeling and experience. 
His writings are one continuous string of I, I, I ; me, me, me; 
my, my, my. There never was raised upon the globe another 
such dome of exquisite sensibility as we find in Paul. And 
yet, his whole being was so absolutely given up to others that 
reading his letters through you would not think of his ego- 
tism at all. He was so perfectly absorbed in his work in be- 
half of. his fellows that his thought of himself was but the 
thought of the great central Jesus. 

Now, he was a Jew ; and Jews were built up through 
generations of good stuff. There never was any other such 



514 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

stock as the Jewish stock. And, as he raid, he was a 
Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was thoroughbred. Ho had 
received that peculiar education which belonged to the Phari- 
see, putting the greatest value upon rituals, ordinances, 
days, seasons, methods and instruments. A Pharisee of the 
old form is a man who worships the instrument more than the 
end. And that was Paul eminently. Then, he was an in- 
tense lover of his country, as well as of his kind, and he was 
vomited out, having fallen from the confidence of his people, 
and been driven into the desert of Arabia, a wanderer ; and 
he felt as if he was the off scouring of the earth. John never 
seems to have felt that he was despised ; Peter never spoke 
of himself as suffering from any such extremity ; but Paul 
was subjected to trials and hardships on every hand, odium 
was everywhere heaped upon him by his fellow-men ; and 
such was his sensibility of suffering from these causes that he 
declared, all the way through his life, that he died deaths 
daily. And yet, in spite of all that he endured of pain and 
ignominy, he rose up, and said, "I rejoice." Why did he 
rejoice ? Let him answer. " Because when I am weak I am 
strong." But if Christ had not ^ound out that inner Paul, by 
divesting it of the outward and 1 >wer Paul, and letting it out, 
I never should have had such l glorious ideal as I have now, 
lifted far above any ordinary thought of manhood. This 
Paul it was who said, "I rejoice in those infirmities which 
made a man of me in Christ Jesus." 

What do you suppose a crystal thinks when it is discovered 
in a rock by some prowling geologist or mineralogist ? He 
knows that there is a wonderful crystal there ; and so, with 
hammer and chisel, he smites off great chips from the rock, 
carefully watching, on this side and on that, to discover the 
point where the crystal is to appear. And if the crystal is as 
ignorant as it ought to be, it murmurs because such violence 
is done to its surroundings ; because its covering is being 
taken off ; because its hiding-place is disclosed to the ele- 
ments. But the rock is smitten right and left until the crys- 
tal comes out, when it shines in the rays of the sun, and is 
put to noble uses. 

The manhood of man is shut up in that which is worse 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 515 

than a rock — in mud, composed of all manner of animalism ; 
in filth of the appetites and passions ; and it is this manhood 
.that is being sought by providences that strike it here and 
there, cutting oif this desire, and that pleasure ; extinguish- 
ing this pride/ and that vanity ; and more and more bringing 
the man away from the lower and animal realm, to a higher 
region, where he sees the lustre of those virtues which bring 
him into affinity, and which will finally bring him into con- 
tact, with God. And in view of this, being enlightened, 
Paul says : 

"1 take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in per- 
secutions, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then am I strong." 

Now, there is no longer any mystery, there is no mysti- 
cism, in that. It is very plain. 

Taking away, then, from a man that which is worldly and 
visible should bring his soul up towards the grand invisible, 
and back towards communion with God ; and if it does that, 
then it breeds strength in the higher nature, although it may 
entail weakness in the lower nature. When personal limita- 
tions and hindrances develop in a person patience, courage, 
hope, and disinterestedness, then they enrich him. 

A man is at the top ; he is a Bourbon king, who has all 
money, all service of the sword, and all external glory ; and 
yet he is effete, imbecile, strong in all his appetites which 
tend toward the degraded forms of sensuous enjoyment. He 
stands the highest in the nation, and yet he is the lowest. 

Here is a man who has in himself intrinsic excellences 
which have been adumbrated by habit, education and circum- 
stances. He goes to the top of power. There he stands in 
his appetites and passions, in his selfishness and pride, in all 
rancorous elements. At length his fortunes change, he is 
cast down from the throne, he is imprisoned, he escapes, and 
wanders in the wilderness. After twenty years of experience 
in the world, tempered, gentle, wise and self-restrained, he 
is more a king in exile than he was on the throne. There 
is more of the man in him when he is divested of every ex- 
trinsic circumstance of elevation than there was when he 
was surrounded by all that goes to make worldly glory. 

It is of Christ that the apostle says, " Though he was cru- 



516 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD, 

cified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of 
God ;" and as he never was long in bringing the example of 
Christ to bear, so we may well turn for illustration to that* 
example. 

Was there ever one in all the land that was more powerful 
than Christ up to the time when he gave to the multitude the 
five loaves and the few fishes on the shore north-east of the 
Sea of Galilee ? The wave had come to its very highest roll ; 
and up to that time, nothing availed against him. The peo- 
ple, as one man, were enthusiastic for him ; and when he re- 
fused, at that point, to disclose himself, and become their 
king, they all fled away from him. From that moment the 
wave and the tide ran out, and left him stranded, so that he 
abandoned Galilee henceforth, and went north to rest and re- 
cruit his spirit. And then, upon the mountain, alone, exiled, 
after the enthusiasm of the common people had died away, 
and despised of the rulers and the Pharisees — then he was 
transfigured ; and in all the plenitude of his personal honors 
he had not been so much as now he was in the solitude of the 
mountain top, when he glowed white as the light itself. 
Then, at the time of the humiliation, he was lifted up more 
than at any other time. 

Christ went in through the gate of Jerusalem. He came in 
with sovereignty. A great crowd thronged him. The terror 
and the admiration of the raising of Lazarus from the grave 
were in the air ; and the people poured around him. They 
cast their garments upon an ass, and took him and sat him 
thereon ; and they uttered those shouts of the Old Testament 
which announced the Messiah ; and the whole air was filled 
with hosannas, until all Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehos- 
haphat were not large enough to hold the jubilant cries that 
arose in the distance. 

Three days afterward, that same crowd, or portions of it, 
waited on Christ again. Now, he was no longer r.ding, but 
was borne down by the cross that had been laid upon his 
shoulders. No longer was the air filled with shouts of " Hosan- 
na! Hosanna ! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the 
Lord" ; but it was filled with cries, fierce and savage, of 
" Crucify him ! Crucify him ! " At length, worn, and so 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 517 

weak that he cotild no longer bear the cross, it was put upon 
another to be borne ; and finally he was carried, and, in igno- 
miny, was lifted np into the air, helpless, and nailed to the 
cross on which he died ; and after he was dead he was 
brought down again, and laid in a rock sepulcher ; and a 
stone was rolled against the door ; and the door was sealed. 
When all was over, the chief priests and Pharisees nodded to 
each other, as much as to say, " That man is done with, and 
we are triumphant." Yet, in the silence and death and 
disaster which reigned were the roots of that which has 
changed the face of the earth ; and the glory of Christ began 
to dawn out of the darkness of that event. The hand of 
sovereignty was not paralyzed when he lay in the grave. He 
was more sovereign then than he was before. ISTot when he 
went into Jerusalem with outward insignia of honor was he 
king ; but when .he had been beaten down and destroyed, 
then his might came forth. It was in the hour of loss arid 
shame that the sovereignty of God was manifest in Love suf- 
fering for the world. 

In view, then, of this exposition of Paul's thought, let me 
say, first, that while outward blessings are an advantage ; 
while it is good for a man to be born of noble parents, 
to be born in a virtuous household, to be born with oppor- 
tunities for the appropriate application of all his powers to 
the work of life — while all these things are, or may be 
made of great advantage, the loss of all these things, 
also, may be a higher one. There are thousands of men who 
are destroyed because they have so much. We do not need 
to go far to find evidence of this. On every side of us we see 
what mistakes men make when they ruin their children by 
the helps with which they surround them. Many children 
are bom into comfort ; they never know what it is to 
want ; they never have a pressure made upon them ; they 
are rocked in a cradle of ease ; they are carried in the 
arms of love ; they are hardly suffered to put their feet 
upon the soil. They have wealth in abundance ; their 
position in society is secured to them ; the hereditary name 
itself is their crown of glory ; everything that heart could 
wish is theirs ; and they are growing up, under such 



518 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

circumstances, without ever haying had a motive to de- 
velop themselves. Everything exterior is brought to them 
and put upon them. How many thousand men have 
been ruined by the abundance of their opportunities — by 
their advantages ! Cursed be these advantages that kill 
men ! How many rich men have destroyed their sous, how 
many honorable men have destroyed their sons, how many 
great men have destroyed their sons, by heaping up and 
neaping up exterior possessions around them ! 

It is as if an optician who was studying the microscope 
should be so liked by his neighbors that they should stop up 
his windows on every side, and leave him in the dark. What 
if it was gold-bearing quartz that they put on the windows, 
what; if it was magnificent trees that they used for blocking 
up the avenues of light, his occupation would be ruined, and 
he would be ruined, by their over-kindness. 

If God has given us an honorable parentage, an abundance 
of means, and conditions and circumstances which take away 
from us the necessity of self-denial, and the opportunity for 
the exercise and development in us of power, what chance is 
there for the development of our manhood ? How can he 
learn patience who is never oppressed by so much as the weight 
of a dew-drop ? 

•Old trees that stand on mountain sides, and that the wind 
plays harp with through winter and summer, grow strong, so 
that the tornado cannot wrest them from their places. Oaks 
that are anchored among the rocks the earthquake itself can- 
not dislodge. They grow massive through the centuries. 
But take the palm-tree that never has been outside of the 
conservatory. It is brought up with no more agitation than 
a bee makes when flying in its branches. And how much 
can it bear ? If the gardener but leaves the door open for a 
single night, and the frost comes to it, it is gone. It has no 
stamina. It is softened by the things that made it grow so 
fat. How many men there are who grow on dung-hills, like 
weeds, succulent, juicy, good for nothing ! 

On the other hand, how many men mourn to think that 
they had no chances in life. The child lived far from schools, 
far from churches, far from good society ; but he was born with 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 519 

a mother-heart in him. He was endowed with some aspira- 
tion. His very necessities were his school-masters. Severe 
schoolmasters are they, with ferule and whip in hand. 
Many a poor man lies before the forge and by its light 
learns his letters. Many a slave in the house of bondage, 
amidst pain and suffering, pores over his books, and lays the 
foundation for an education ; and at last by patience and 
perseverance they rise up out of their difficulties. And 
then, what stalwart men they are ! What can harm them ? 
They stand fortified by that strength which they have gained 
from afflictions and hardships that have wrought in them 
heroic courage and self-reliance. Woe to the man who has 
everything brought to him ; and blessed are they who are 
born under adverse circumstances, and have no chance in 
life ; and who, instead of whining because they have no 
chance, .develop an inward manhood that gives them a 
chance — for there is that in man which dominates over 
chance, time, and nature. A man can make himself sover- 
eign if he has but the purpose. 

It is not a good thing to have ill-health ; it is not a good 
thing to have bodily ailments ; but it is a great deal better to 
have bodily ailments that work out manhood than good 
health that works out imbecility. 

How many many there are who roll through life, and per- 
form no higher functions than the swine at the trough ! 
Round and fat they are; sleek and comely they are; good 
eaters they are ; good drinkers they are ; good sleepers they 
are ; and good diers they are — for when they are dead they 
are out of the way. They are born with a cry ; then they eat 
and drink and sleep ; and then they die with a wheeze — that 
is all. And how much are they worth ? What are they good 
for ? Oh, what nice men they are ! How plump and rosy- 
cheeked they are ! How kind-hearted they are ! They know 
how to do things, oh how pleasantly ! How graceful they 
can be ! They can tell you the hour of the day, because they 
know the time of breakfast and dinner and supper. Men say 
of them, " Of course they are not geniuses ; but then they are 
harmless." So are flies in summer harmless. They are fine 
as the world goes. Yet my asparagus-bed brings forth as 



520 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

good men as they are. I would as lief have fat vegetables as 
these men of the shambles. 

But I know of a great many men, and more women a 
hundred times, all of whose hours are marked by their suffer- 
ings. They have every discouragement. I can imagine a 
mother who has never known, though royally endowed with a 
sensibility to love, what it was to receive true disinterested 
affection. She dreamed of it in her girlhood, and she thought 
she had it ; but as a bubble breaks when the child touches it, 
so she lost the love which she supposed she had when first 
she put it to the test ; and from that time she lived with a 
semi-brute, who owed to her example what little he had. He 
was the father of her twelve children, and she, worn with 
poverty, with labor, and with anxiety, suffered in every nerve, 
through every hour of the day, sustained by the love of her 
children, and the faint and feeble hope of a better existence 
hereafter. By her life she was the, example of the neighbors 
and of her children. The father died a drunkard, as he had 
lived, a waster and a worthless fellow. She was both righteous- 
ness and sanctification ; and she carried the whole house- 
hold by her suffering, by her patience, by her courage, and 
by her self-denial ; and every one of them became a useful 
man or woman. 

Now, tell me what shall be the state of that woman in the 
future, when she finds herself, and knows what she has been 
about here. In this world everything is dark to her. The 
record of her life is written with black ink. " Suffering, suf- 
fering, suffering," is imprinted on her brow. She knows 
almost no days of bright summer. There are almost no dew- 
drops, and there is almost no fragrance, to her. She has one 
long career of want and misery. But see the work she has 
done. Look at the twelve children that' she has brought up. 
Oh, what royalty there is in her ! God's sweetest angels 
will hover over her when she dies, and by them she will 
be borne to the very presence of the Kedeemer. There is 
nothing on earth that is like the look of recognition which he 
will give her, or like the words, "Well done, good and faith- 
ful servant/' which he will address to her — for when you 
enter heaven you enter the heart of Jesus. And then how 



SPIRITUAL MAmiOOD. 521 

will her past afflictions and infirmities seem to her as she 
looks back upon them ? While here she prays, and says, " O 
Lord, how long, how long ?" But there she will raise a won- 
drous song of praise whose notes are written in afflictions and 
troubles and sufferings. Now she mourns — for her eyes are 
holden so that she cannot see ; but there, her eyes being 
opened, she will rejoice with joy unspeakable. 

ye that are laid on beds of sickness ; ye that mourn 
because you are cut off from the work of life ; what is the 
work of life ? Is it building St. Peter's ? It may be that. 
It may also be ploughing the field. Either by ploughing the 
field or by building the temple we may be ministering to our 
higher manhood, and to the welfare of others. He that builds 
a higher manhood is doing the work of G-od ; whether he 
constructs an edifice or tills the soil. 

If you want the sweetest of flowers — the trailing ar- 
butus — you will not find it on the tops of churches ; you 
will not find it on walls of brick ; you will not find it in cul- 
tivated places where the resources of the farmers skill and 
ingenuity have been expended ; you will not AdcI it on the 
lofty hills. It humbly creeps along the edges of the forest 
where the soil is dry, and not rich. Before the snow is com- 
pletely gone you may find it nestling aown under the leaves. 
You will find it by scenting its odor, sooner than by seeing it. 
All winter it has lain under the snow and under the leaves, 
ready to burst forth in the spring ; and when it has come 
forth, it has a beauty with which nothing else can vie. 
Blessed be the winter, blessed be the snow, and blessed be the 
covering leaves, dry and withered., under which lie such ex- 
quisite blossoms. 

1 tell you, God's flower-bed is oftentimes your sick-bed ; 
for patience, a sweet resignation, faith that look': beyond the 
visible, and that development of a true manhood which sick- 
ness often brings out in its royalty and fullnsss — these things 
are better than any outward achievement. 

Then, if . God wants you to work, work ; but Work out 
your true manhood. If He wants you to stand, stand ; but 
stand in your true manhood. If He wants you to lie down ; 
lie down ; but, lying down, let your true manhood shine out. 



522 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

So men that are cast out and derided in life, if they be 
cast out for righteousness' sake, and be derided in a good 
cause, though they lose all honor, and all praise, and all 
popularity, will gain a great deal more than they lose. It is 
a yery easy thing for a man to be great when his greatness 
consists in externalities ; it is a yery easy thing for a man to 
be great who is satisfied with the production of physical 
effects ; but suppose these are all swept away, and the man 
still abides in a peace which passes all understanding, and 
with unclouded eye discerns the world beyond, without the 
loss of manhood or courage ? Suppose a man bears his mis- 
fortunes as Sossuth does his exile in Italy, carrying the great 
cause of humanity in poverty, in contempt, and in perse- 
cution ? Oh, how royal is such a man ! How glorious are 
men who suffer for principle ! — for he who joins himself to a 
principle joins himself to G-od. He who joins himself to 
matter, and lives by the greatness of things visible and physic- 
al, is of the dust ; but he who joins himself to an invisible 
truth, or to a holy cause, and stands by it, and thrives by the 
love of it, is of the divine nature, and shall never perish till 
God himself perish eth. 

And so, to that great number cf men who just now, every- 
where, are being tossed up and down ; to the vast multitude 
who have had their hopes disappointed ; to that immense 
throng of ruined men with whom our land is filled — broken 
merchants ; bankers upset ; men that stood high in churches 
brought down by the loss of money ; to all of those who are 
wandering up and down the earth not knowing where to go 
or what to do, let these considerations be an encouragement. 
Men, looking at one who has been stripped of his property, 
say, " Well, that man is cleaned out." Ah !. I should like to 
see any commercial or political reverse that could clean out a 
true man. Hercules could clean out the Augean stables ; and 
you can despoil a man of that which is of the earth, earthy ; 
but a man who lives in communion Vvdth his God ; a man who 
knows thai: he is not of this world ; a man who knows that 
there cannot be a hell for him, and that there is a heaven for 
him to which he shall attain by aspiration, by faith and by 
courage — he knows that there is for him no annihilation and 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 523 

no overthrow. How can misfortune overthrow anything be- 
longing to a man but his outward manhood ? 

I would, if I could, send my voice all over all this land, 
to cities, and towns, and hamlets ; and I would say to 
men pinched with distress, Now is the time for you to let 
your manhood come out. You have been living by the 
senses, and in your lower manhood ; but God has given you 
your chance for resurrection. Be mightier than ever you 
were before. Be more firm in your faith in God. And do 
not give up your trust in Providence. Eemember that there 
is "a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens" 
awaiting you. Draw down something of the deposits of that 
bank which was never broken nor robbed. Look higher, and 
go higher. 

When the Ohio river is at its lowest ebb there arc places 
which a boy could ford, going across with perfect ease and 
safety ; but in the spring, when the snow melts on the Alleg- 
hanies, and the water comes pouring down, the channel 
between the banks is. filled so that neither man nor beast can 
cross it. And when the mightier storms come on, the Ohio 
swells and rises still higher, and overflows the banks, and 
covers the low lands, and men drive their cattle up on higher 
ground, and take refuge there themselves. And when the 
greatest freshets come the inhabitants go on climbing higher 
and higher until they reach points where the flood cannot 
reach them. 

So, when the overflowing storms of reverse and disappoint- 
ment overcome you, do not sit still and bo drowned ; and do 
not float like water-logged sticks, too long cut, soaked, and 
rotten, and good for nothing ; but rise so high that no flood 
and no envenomed shaft can reach you ; so high that heaven 
shall be your home, that you shall bo in the presence of God, 
and that that spiritual manhood shall be yours which can see 
no corruption. 



524 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

O Lord our God, why do we diaw near to thee to ask thee for 
those mercies which already are spread abroad within the reach of 
all? Why should we beseech thee for the morning's sun when it is its 
light which has awakened us? Why should we implore thee for fair 
skies and a benign atmosphere when we live therein and rejoice in it 
already? Why should we pray for all surrounding comforts which 
are multiplied to us every day? Why should we any more pray for 
thy love? Incessant it is. Before we were born it existed, and we 
were baptized into it by birth. Why should we ask for the graces of 
thy providence, for all the munitions of strength, for all the things 
that defend life and fill it up, since we have them, and since they 
come to us whether wc be good or evil ? 

O Lord our God, we come for more things, and other and higher 
things, than these. We come for that sense which does not come by 
nature — the sense spiritual. Wo draw near to ask that we may have 
that inspiration of the Holy Ghost by which we shall be lifted above 
the reason that is derived from matter, or works therein ; that we may 
have in time some of that light that is to dawn upon the ransomed 
spirit, when we drop the body and walk forth from this dungeon of 
the earth. We ask that we may have such nearness of spirit to thee 
that we shall ask without asking, feel without feeling, know without 
knowledge, and be sure without reasoning. . 

We ask, this morning, for the communication of thyself. We 
know, afar off and by its faint dawn through our earthly experience, 
what it is for being to mingle with being ; what it is for those who 
love, in silence, and even without looking in each others faces, to have 
the force of love throbbing from life to life. And how great, how 
glorious, is that inter-communication! 

Oh grant that we may be as children are in their mothers' arms, who 
look into their faces, and read them without words, and know whether 
they smile or whether they frown. They cannot discern the face of 
the sky; they know not how to go alone, even; but they know a 
mother'3 thought and feeling, and are happy. 

Bring us into the presence of God's love. Give to us that sensi- 
bility to love which time cannot touch, and which this world cannot 
smother. Grant us, we pray thee, a sense of God present with us — 
Immanuel. Grant unto us Christ in us the hope of glory. Grant 
unto us a life hidden in Christ. This is the greatest, the chiefest, of 
royal favors, and we are emboldened to ask for it. When thou dost 
giant it to us, then our souls shall cry Abba, Father. Then we shall 
have tho witness of the Spirit. Then we shall behold, and rejoice, and 
be strong, in spite of self-defilement, and all diminishing, and all 
overthrow, and" misfortune of every kind. 

How little could our children do if we should cast them forth in 
their infancy, and tell them to go alone, and battle with the world, 
giving them no care and no wisdom ! and what could we do, O loving 
God, interpreted to us through Jesus, if thou didst leave us to creep 
through all the defilements of life and meet its oppositions, and thou 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 525 

wert not our Guardian ? Oh then, give us to feel that thy providence 
is the loving and the acting and the thinking God. May we under- 
stand that nature is but thine hand opening and shutting, and that its 
manifestations are but the expressions of thy will, and that thou dost 
not need to think every moment, as if thy thoughts sprang from 
thinking. Grant that we may understand that we are so surrounded 
by thee that we are evermore in thy sight; that we are evermore 
provided with guardianship in the thought of God; that he thinks of 
us; that his love is stronger than any that man can feel, and outruns 
every letter and word even of conduct, yea, and triumphs, at last, 
over death itself. 

Grant that we may understand that in the perils of this life we are 
safe, not in our own wisdom, not in our own virtue, not in any power 
that is in us, but in the greatness of thy guardianship, in the pleni- 
tude o." thy love and mercy. And so may we stand firm from day to- 
day in i.'ie thought that though we are weak, thou art strong ; that 
though we are imperfect, thou art perfect; that though we are de- 
filed, thou art pure ; that though we are unlovely, thou hast a nature 
that loves un loveliness. So we desire to be strong in the Lord. Thus 
thou art made unto us righteousness and sanctification. Thus we are 
clothed with thee, and are fed perpetually upon thee. 

We pray that thor wilt help most those who most do need. Help 
especially all who are u^sponding; all who are weary; all to whom 
life seems but an empty show; all who are letting go, discouraged, of 
their daily tasks; all that suffer from waut, from poverty of various 
kinds; all who have had crucifixion in their hearts; all who have 
loved, only from love to have the biteruess of sorrow; all who wait 
for others, and watch over them with tears, with weariness, with hope 
deferred, that makes the heart sick; all who are in business, and are 
overtempted, and strive in vain to rescue themselves; all that have 
done wrong, often, against their best resolutions, and are seeking to 
regain the shores safely, but are caught by the devouring waves 
which run faster than they, and sweep them back again into the 
flood. Lord God, look upon all this mass of suffering and imperfec- 
tion and sin that mutely cries unto the?, and that does not know its 
own necessity, nor its own remedy. But thou knowest all ; and draw 
near, we pray thee, to eTery one, that each heart may feel that God 
is thinking of it. How does the soil know that the sun hath remem- 
bered to come back from its far-off wondering:, but by its brightness 
and by its warmth; and how shall we know that thou art near, but 
by the hope and faith and comfort that come to us in strange ways 
and places. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt behold the varied trouble that 
exists, and the greatest trouble of all, the want which springs from 
sinning. 

Have compassion, we pray thee, upon those who are in thy pre- 
sence. Now, in this hour of their consciousness of need, in this mo- 
ment of their nearness to thee, if their soul speaks to thee, oh be gra- 
cious to them, that they may come again and again: that they may 
not forget to come; that they may shelter themselves in thee, and 
find that that which their weakness cannot do, thy strength can; so 



526 SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 

that at last their very weakness shall be their strength, and their very 
defeat shall be their victory. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to all thy servants who 
labor in thy cause; to all those who are joined together for the pur- 
pose of making known the truth of Christ. Give them the impulse 
of tby truth in their own personal experiences. 

We pray for all those who are taught in our schools; for all who 
are gathered in from the highways and the byways. We rejoice, O 
Lord ! that thou hast put it into the hearts of thy people to do so 
much, and to be willing to suffer a little for the sake of those who 
suffer much. We pray that thou wilt increase this spirit, and that 
men may not live for themselves and for their own good alone, but 
that their joy may come from the good which they do to others. We 
pray that thou wilt spread this spirit through all the churches, and 
that we may seek, not the exterior, not the sepulcher, but rather the 
Christ that is risen. We pray that men may not be developed any 
more by the malign passions with which good men too often are 
tempted to defend things which they think to be right. May we learn 
the meekness of Jesus, his humility, and his patience under scoffing 
and scorn. May we learn that our manhood lies, not in outward 
honor and glory and power, but in the hidden human soul. So may 
we grow strong in thy service— strong inwardly; and may the power 
of God, through us, be augmented on men. 

We pray for this nation. We pray that thou wilt bless the Presi- 
dent of these United States and all who are joined with him in author- 
ity. Bless the Congress assembled. Bless ail the Legislatures in our 
several States. Bless the Governors, Judges and Magistrates. We 
pray that thou wilt make them God-fearing men. May they admin- 
ister the sacred trusts which are committed to them severally, not 
only in the fear of God, but in the love of men. We pray that this 
great people may be a law-abiding and God-fearing people, seeking 
the things which are just and true and right. 

Nor would we forget those nations which are near to us. We pray 
that thou wilt bless all the nations of the earth that lie before thee. 
Are they not ours, as they are thine? We pray for the growth of hu- 
manity and of justice; for the cleansing of all the ways of procedure; 
for the strengthening of that which is true and manly; for the dom- 
ination of al that is best. May all the nations at last learn peace, 
friendship, fealty to God, and fidelity to each Other. And let those 
glorious days for which the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, and 
good men in every age waited, and for which we have longed and 
waited, and do still wait, whose dawning is yet but as the tremulous 
twilight on the mountains in the morning— let those days advance 
and unroll ; so that thy glory shall till the whole earth, as the waters 
fill the sea. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen 



SPIRITUAL MANHOOD. 527 



PKAYER AFTEE THE SEKMON. 

Our Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt lend us thyself, thai 
we may lean on thee, and that we may draw nourishment from thee 
as the child does from the mother's bosom. We are very poor. We 
are of the earth. We are emerging from darkness. We are seeking 
ourselves. The way is hard, and the climbing is difficult ; but thou 
art making it easier and easier. We pray thou wilt teach us how to 
bear hardness and trouble, without complaint, without murmuring, 
without discontent, and without unbelief. Grant that by sickness, by 
losses, by persecutions, by infirmities, by a thousand hindrances that 
come upon us, we may learn how to rise higher and higher, till we com« 
into that crystal dome through which comes the sunlight from above. 
Give us that rest which remaineth for the people of God, to be our 
tower and our sure defense. Spread abroad thy wings, that under 
the coverts thereof we may be secure. We ask these things in the 
name of the Beloved, to whom, with the Father and the Spirit, shall 
be praises evermore. Amen. 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 



" I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians ; both to 
the wise and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to 
preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also." — Bom. i. 14, 15. 



The Jews were accustomed to divide the human race into 
two parts — those that were Jews, and those that were not. 
The division is very simple, and it entirely suited their pride. 
The best part of the human race were Jews ; and all the rest, 
those that were not Jews, whatever they happened to be, 
were Gentiles. That word, Gentiles, was their name for all 
the scraps and leavings, all the odds and ends, all the worth- 
less bits of humanity. 

In this the Jews did not differ from their near neighbors, 
the Greeks, who were accustomed to divide the world in the 
same way, into those that were Greeks, and those that were 
not Greeks, only instead of calling those who were not Greeks 
Gentiles, they called them Barbarians. So there were the 
Greeks — a small handful ; and the Barbarians — the vast out- 
side multitude. 

This in literature, simply, would be conceited and arro- 
gant ; but when you consider that such a use of language was 
a very faint representation of the line of conduct, and of 
feeling which was underneath it, it becomes a matter of very 
great moral moment. The outsiders were pensioners. They 
were in the situation of dogs that eat the crumbs which fall 

Sunday Morning, February 22, 1874. Lesson : Luke xiv. 1-22. Hymns : (Ply- 
mouth Collection) : Nos. 604, 1020. 1040. 



532 THE. DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

from their master's table. The Jew regarded his duty as 
lying within the circle of national life. All the rest, what he 
did beyond that was, in the main, from courtesy and not from 
obligation. It was, as he looked upon it, so much extra, that 
nobody had a right to expect or demand. And the Greeks 
felt that toward Greeks they owed national duties, patriotic 
relations, but that whatever kindness was shown to the Bar- 
barians was unmerited, and was a work of supererogation on 
the part of the Greeks. Their human duties they thought 
stopped with those who belonged to their nationality ; and if 
they exercised justice and equity and kindness toward those 
who were outside of it they regarded that as so much virtue 
more than anybody had a right to demand of them, or ex- 
pect from them. 

This trait has not stopped with the Jews, nor with the 
Greeks. The feeling that we owe our countrymen much, and 
foreigners little, has come down to our time. Some of the 
most powerful tendencies of Christianity have hardly yet 
entered into the minds of men, and those derivative habits 
or influences which spring from the primitive man, in his low 
and animal condition, yet rule. 

We are a]l acquainted with the record of the time when, 
if by chance a stranger was shipwrecked, or otherwise lost, 
and fell upon an island, or on the shore of a different stock 
or race, his life was supposed to belong to that people, and 
they could slay him, or make him a slave, or do what they 
pleased with him. In that age of the world it was a perilous 
thing to go into another nation. 

The origin of that custom, you need not go far to see. 
Who, that has lived upon a farm, has not noticed among cat- 
tle that same thing ? If you drive a strange ox into a herd of 
oxen, they all begin to gore him, and he has to go through a 
probationary period before he is recognized as one of their 
number. If a strange fowl is carried into a barn-yard, in- 
stantly all the other fowls that are there turn against him. 
They look upon him as an outsider, and an intruder, and 
fight him. And the same spirit runs through the animal 
kingdom. All animals go on the principle of taking care of 
their own young, and those that are near to them, and fight- 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 533 

ing all others. And such was the spirit, in its primitive con- 
dition, of the human animal. The early records of our race 
are records of kindness in a very limited circle, of which the 
man himself was the center, he being surrounded by his 
household, and those who were nearly connected with him. 
Whoever added to his treasure, or to his glory, were objects 
of his favor. In other words, the principle of selfishness lay 
at the root of kindness, and as far as it was for the interest 
of a man to be kind in his neighborhood, or in his nation, 
so far his kindness extended, in its imperfect forms. Be- 
yond that, there was no obligation and no law recognized. 

This, in uninstructed natures, is still the universal ten- 
dency. Where the gospel has not introduced a new style of 
ethics, this element of self-interest reigns with great power ; 
and even where it has, that element is not yet eradicated. 
It still inheres throughout Christian nations, in the church, 
in government, in policies, in a thousand forms. 

With the development of the new life ; with the develop- 
ment of the love of God in the soul ; with the development 
of a life of benevolence, was formed a new schedule of duties. 
From the flesh-life, and the primitive condition of the animal 
race of men ; from the law of selfishness, and the law of; 
force there was developed, higher than that, another ethical 
principle — that of disinterested kindness. It was a totally 
different principle, acting in opposite directions from the 
former one, and upon totally different lines. 

In the second scheme of morals, the law is, Do good to all 
men, as yoti have opportunity. In other words, it is, Do good 
to men in the proportion in which they need to have good done 
to them. According to this law, you are to do good to those 
that are around you — to your neighbors. And if you ask, 
"Is neighbor a term which is local ? are we to do good to 
those who live near us ?" I reply, that it was interpreted by 
the parable of our Saviour to mean those who need you. 

A man, going down fco Jericho, fell among thieves. They 
stripped him, and wounded him, and left him half dead. In 
connection with this event, you have personified the class- 
instincts which existed among men. There came by that 
way a priest. He saw him, but, perceiving that he was not a 



534 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

priest, he said, "My duties are to those of my own kind, he 
is not of that sort, and I cannot stop." There also came by 
a Levite. He looked on him, and saw that he was not a 
Levite, and said, "Well, he does not belong to my set." He 
saw that he had no relations to him, and passed on. There 
likewise came by a Samaritan. Now a Samaritan was a most 
unsavory man in the nostrils of the Jews. All people have 
their chimney, out of which they let their smoke pass ; every- 
body must have something to damn ; the malign and hating 
instincts of men seek some avenue of escape : and nations 
have their scape-goats, on which to vent their hatred and 
scorn. And we have it in religion. Every sect has some 
other sect which they regard as the off-scouring of the earth, 
and upon which they heap all the terms of contumely, and all 
the epithets of dislike, which they can command. Those of 
one sect regard those of another sect as heterodox ; as pre- 
tenders; as insincere; as worldly; as seeking only varnish, 
etc. Each sect looks upon those who are outside of them- 
selves as more than suspicious. And the bitterest feelings of 
the Jews went out toward the Samaritans. They hated them 
all the more because they were rivals. They pretended to be 
orthodox ; and they had a priest-hood ; they were parallel 
with the Jews ; and the Jews hated them to such a degree 
that you might almost have thought a Jew was a Christian ! 
So, after our Saviour had interpreted the law of the neighbor, 
and explained what was the sphere and circuit of obligation 
man to man ; after he had taken the priest, and shown that 
he did not care for humanity, and did not relieve the man 
who had fallen among thieves because he did not belong to 
his class ; and after he had taken the Levite, and shown the 
same in regard to him ; then he took the Samaritan. A 
Samaritan was enough to make a Jew swear at any time, even 
in the middle of public worship. A Jew scorned the very 
name of a Samaritan. And yet a Samaritan was the very 
man whose conduct Jesus commended. He went up to the 
unfortunate victim ; he came where he was ; he bound up his 
wounds ; he gave him medicine ; he put him on an ass, and 
carried him to an inn ; he paid his bills in advance ; and not 
to stint his kindness, he said to the inn-keeper, " If he needs 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 535 

anything that I have not provided, give it to him, and when 
I come again I will pay thee." 

Such is the parable. Its drift is to interpret the meaning 
of the term neighbor. It teaches that those who need service 
are your neighbors, no matter who they are. 

Paul says, i( I am a debtor." We begin to draw near to 
that class of ideas from which we are to interpret his mean- 
ing. We may imagine in what respect he was a debtor to the 
Jews ; he had received much from them. But what had he 
received from the Greeks, that he was bound to pay back ? 
Was he a disciple of their philosophy ? He was not. Had he 
received from their bounty in the matter of % art ? No. One 
of the most striking things in history is the fact that Paul 
abode in Athens, and wrote about it, without having any im- 
pression made upon his imaginative mind, apparently, by its 
statues, its pictures, or its temples. The most gorgeous period 
of Grecian art poured its light on his path, and he never 
mentioned it. The New Testament is as dead to art-beauty 
as though it had been written by a hermit in an Egyptian pyr- 
amid, who had never seen the light of the sun. Then, what 
did he owe to the Greeks ? Not philosophy, not art, and 
certainly not religion, which was feticism. What was there 
that he owed to the Gentiles — the great outlying barbaric 
multitude, as the Greeks would call them, or to the great 
multitude of Gentiles, as the Jews would call them ? They 
had no revelation ; they were in darkness ; and he was a 
Hebrew of the Hebrews, brought up in such a way that 
through him have come the light of God and Divine influ- 
ences to the human race. He knew his mission. He was not 
a man who was likely not to know it. And what did he pay ? 
Not a debt of literature, nor of art, nor of civil polity. Not 
a debt of pecuniary obligation ; not any ordinary debt. He 
had nothing from all these outside sources. On the other 
hand, he was perpetually laying others under obligation by 
enlarging their horizon ; by giving them nobler conceptions 
of manhood ; by attempting to bring out and unfold higher 
and better elements of humanity ; by changing the prevail- 
ing ideas of civility ; by giving a new soul to law, and a new 
heart to national life. He was pouring out the spirit of 



536 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

civilization, and laying the foundations of after excellence. 
What debt could he owe? And yet said he, "1 am debtor 
both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, both to the wise 
and to the unwise." What could that debt be ? Not in- 
terchange of values, as I have already intimated. It must 
have lain wholly in a condition of want which, to his moral 
consciousness, existed outside of himself, and his own con- 
scious fullness of supply. The whole barbaric world was 
without the true knowledge of God ; he had that knowledge ; 
and he owed it to every man who had it not. All the civ- 
ilized world was, in these respects, without the true inspira- 
tion ; Paul had that inspiration ; and he owed it to them, 
simply because they did not have it ; and his debt to them 
was founded on this law of benevolence of which I have been 
speaking, which is to supersede selfishness, and according to 
which those who have are indebted to those who have not, the 
world over. 

You perceive how wide, if this law were recognized, is the 
change that it would make everywhere. Let us apply it to 
some forms of society. It is the law which, when rightly in- 
terpreted, means that we are debtors in the ratio of our 
supply, and in the ratio of others' need. We are not debtors by 
commercial principle, nor by the law of equivalent. We are 
not debtors because we have received something for which 
we must pay a fair exchange, but simply on the ground that 
morally we have that which other people need. He who 
has wisdom owes it to the man who has no wisdom. " I am 
debtor both to the wise and to the unwise" — to the wise to 
give them more wisdom ; to the unwise to give them some 
wisdom. We are debtors to those who are good, to help their 
goodness ; and to those who are bad, to make them good. 
We are debtors to those who are high, because no matter how 
high a man is he still wants. If we have succor that others 
need, we owe it to them. No man lives unto himself. Liv- 
ing or dying, we are the Lord's — and that not in a narrow 
sense, but in the sense that we adhere to him as followers 
adhere to the chieftain, to do his will ; the Lord's will was 
to give his life a ransom for many ; and he gave it in a his- 
torical fact, by symbols bringing out the great truth of 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 537 

truths, that it is the Divine nature to love,and that God, 
instead of being a quiescent, luxurious monarch, in the midst 
of all manner of enjoyments and dulcet harmonies, is the 
intensest Worker of the universe — One who sacrifices himself 
for men. 

This is the key-note of creation — that God is giving forth 
his own life to raise men from the lowest form to the next 
higher, from this to the next higher, and from this to the 
next higher. If we are Christ's, it is because we interpret 
and exemplify, as he did, the true love of God. All those men 
who have the spirit of Christ are giving themselves forth a 
ransom for many, not in the same sense that he did, but ac- 
cording to the measure of their power and of their sphere. We 
are of Christ when we imitate him by giving ourselves for 
others. 

In social development this law is to the last degree im- 
portant. It is true, that there is such a thing as station, and 
that there are relative duties. The old gray-haired man and 
the child of five years of age do not stand on an equality; but 
in the largest application of the law of benevolence the old 
man owes the child more than the child owes him. I have 
seen children in families who were nothing but servants and 
slaves to their elders. They were the useful little errand 
children ; they were the children to run and fetch ; they were 
the children to stand and quiver at a look. It was said to 
them, "You are children, and you must know your place; 
you must be kept down." Surely, children should learn obe- 
dience and respect, and do the things which stand at the 
point where their powers naturally attack and engage in the 
offices of life ; but, after all, children are, in the household, 
so far as their elders are concerned, to be objects on which the 
greater can exercise their disinterested benevolence. Father 
and mother, according to the great law of love, or of disinter- 
ested benevolence, owe the children all that there is in them. 
And in later life, the children, in reciprocal love or benevolence, 
owe themselves to the parents. While the child is weak, all 
the father's strength and experience and patience and courage 
belong to the child ; and when the father is weak, the child, 
his # youth having grown to manhood, and courage, and 



538 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

strength, owes all his power and efficiency to the father. The 
law is the same in both cases. It acts in one way at the be- 
ginning and in the other way at the end. And it acts either 
way according to the law that that which is largest and 
strongest owes itself to that which is weakest and needy. 

So it is with the relations of knowledge and refinement in 
society. Hardly yet do we find in literature, and hardly yet 
do we find anywhere, other than the primitive tendency. 
The true principle is growing, but it is not yet grown. Men 
who have knowledge and refinement naturally think them- 
selves to be the first ; and thinking themselves to be the first, 
they tend to separate themselves from their kind, and become 
objects of admiration and of service — that is, service rendered 
to them according to the false doctrine that because they 
have, they have a right to more. 

We see in the age before ours — in the time of Pope and 
Swift — that English literature was disfigured by the most 
hideous heathenism. The common people were stigmatized 
in terms of contempt, leaving the vocabulary almost ex- 
hausted. Fine letters were considered as belonging to fine 
people ; and those who were not of the educated and intelli- 
gent classes were remanded to a kind of literary darkness. 

The spirit of that time is not gone yet. We have a great 
many men who are scholarly, and who have such a sense of 
the fitness of letters, and of their beauty, that they scorn the 
idea of being judged by the great unwashed common people. 
And so we see in notices of orations and discourses, " The 
audience was small," but "it was select and appreciative." 
Or, "There was a large audience;" "Who were they?" 
"Oh, Gog and Magog ; odds and ends ; everything, all jum- 
bled together." But were they not men? Is not a man 
something without a Mr. before his name ? Do you suppose 
that in the day of judgment men will be judged by their hats 
or by their queues ? Just what they are, and nothing else, 
will come before" God in the last day. And yet how largely 
prevails this old-time feeling that to the wise the wise should 
go, that the wise appreciate the wise, and that other people 
belong by themselves — the low with the low, the vulgar with 
the vulgar, and common folks with common folks. 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 539 

We see the same thing in Science ; for, although there be 
many instances of Christian men in scientific circles — such 
men as Faraday ; although there be many men who not only 
have no contempt for the ignorant, but have a most earnest 
desire for their enlightenment ; yet there is a tendency to 
arrogance and bigotry on the part of men of science. " The 
truth is not for its uses, but for its own sake," men say. I 
say, There is nothing of so much value as men ; and truth 
for its own sake is no more important than a bubble for its 
own sake ; and the difference between the truth and a lie is 
the difference between the effects which they produce on the 
human conscience, or the human, character. All creation is 
but the mere garment or dress of that which is the only unit 
of value, universal man, not in his appetites and passions, but 
in those qualities which make him a son of God, and an 
immortal creature ; and all truth is valuable according to its 
relations to him. To say that truth is studied and wrought 
out for its benevolent uses is Christian ; but to say that truth 
is to be studied and wrought out for its own sake is heathen- 
ish idolatry. 

Both Literature and Science, in our day, are compelled 
to serve, as they should. Because there is in Literature so 
much of refinement, so much of instruction, so much that is 
of value to men who are vulgar by reason of ignorance, it 
ought, in its amplitude, to be a servant of ignorant people ; 
and because science has in it the power to develop so many 
truths that are important to the physical condition of men, 
and to their intellectual and moral condition by and by, it 
owes itself to those who are beneath it — for it is God's 
almoner of bounty to men that are dying for lack of it. 

The same line of thought is applicable to classes in 
society. Since the world began, society has been broken up 
into classes. It must of necessity be so broken up. And 
there is no harm in it provided the spirit of divine benevo- 
lence lives in classes. If a tree be tall, it must have under- 
leaves as well as top-leaves ; but where a tree does not know 
how to grow, and the top spreads, the under-leaves all die 
away, because they do not get the light of the sun ; and 
in society men tend to grow so that the upper-classes shall 



540 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

dwarf the under-classes. Those who are superior are apt to 
exclude those who are inferior from the advantages which 
they enjoy. Now, men associate by elective affinity ; and it 
is proper that they should. It is proper that men of taste 
should consort with men of taste for the cultivation of their 
tastes ; it is proper for men of philosophy, by intercourse, to 
help each other in the development of philosophy ; it is 
proper for men of refinement of letters to aid one another in 
their particular department by association ; it is proper for 
men possessing large power of wealth to unite themselves for 
mutual benefit with those possessing a like power ; but when 
they say, even in spirit, that they are the upper class, and 
that humanity is mainly represented within the circle to 
which they belong, it is the quintessence of Judaism and 
Greekism, as set forth by the men who said, " We are the 
people, and wisdom shall die with us." 

I suppose that in what are called 'the refined circles of 
this city and of the great city near us, there is an uncon- 
scious feeling of sovereignty and superiority — a kind of moral 
feeling that they vulgarize themselves if they are too free with 
those who are not of their sort. I suppose that in most of 
our great cities among what are called "the upper circles" 
or the ' ' higher classes " there is this same feeling. I have 
no doubt that they have a sort of feeling of humanity and 
kindness ; I believe that when shaking their table-cloth they 
like to shake it where the chickens can pick up the crumbs ; 
I have no question that while their lamp gives them the light 
which they need they are willing that it should shine through 
the window and light other people outside ; I think they have 
a kind of philanthropy toward those who are in the sphere 
below them and inferior to them; but you will take notice 
that when our Master was on earth, knowing that he came 
from God and was going to God again, and being conscious 
that he was infinitely superior to all that were around him, 
he consorted with men, not only, but took especial pains to 
show kindness to them so that they should understand that 
there was a real brotherhood existing between him and them. 
He, as you remember, went and took dinner, on the Sabbath, 
at the house of one of the rulers, one of the chief Pharisees 5 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 541 

and when he sat down to the feast, publicans and harlots, 
sinners of every name, crowded in, and he ate with them and 
did not repel them. 

Another instance, showing that he felt no repulsion to 
men, and to those who were low in station, was that in which 
the blind man came to him, and he did not chide him, but 
took him by the hand, and led him out of the town, making 
himself his companion, and then anointing his eyes, so that 
he saw. Why was all this unnecessary instrumentality ? For 
here he was walking by the side of the poor blind beggar, 
like a friend, hand in hand, and restoring his sight in ways 
that made the man feel the very warmth of his bosom, as it 
were. It was an example of the recognition of brotherhood. 

And so, in regard to those of you who belong to the 
superior classes in society, there is no harm in your being 
superior, provided you use your superiority aright. Men may 
say, "I am afraid that if I go down out of my class I shall 
stumble into the vulgarity of those with whom I associate ;" 
but they do not believe that they will, when they say it. Men 
may say, "I belong to this class and I prefer to stay within 
it because all my sensibilities are gratified here ; " but do you 
live to gratify yourself ? Is gratifying one's self the end of 
life ? Is that the Christian law ? Has .any man a right to 
hold himself in his class, and have no intercourse with those 
who are beneath him except that of a patron, and a far-off 
patron, sending down kindnesses to them ? Is there a man 
that is superior who does not owe himself to those who are 
inferior ? There is no other gift that is so worthy of giving 
as one's own self. God, when he would show his love to the 
world, gave himself ; and what are you, that you shall not 
give yourselves ? The higher you are, the " more you owe 
yourselves to the very lowest and least ; and you owe, not 
what you take in your hand, but wLat you have in your heart. 
You owe your taste, your sensibility, your accomplishments, 
your knowledge, your inner man. It is by the medicine of a 
living soul that dead souls are brought to life. 

When, in the old time, the Prophet was called to minister 
to the widow's child, he stretched himself on the child, and 
put his face to the child's face, and laid his palm on the 



542 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

child's palm, and brought his heart to the child's heart ; and 
the child lived. There is nothing so life-giving to souls as 
other souls warming them. And we owe ourselves to our 
fellow-men. The poorer a man is the more he needs you ; 
and the further he is from those states which belong to ele- 
vated humanity, the stronger is your obligation to make him 
a brother. 

Revolutionary doctrines these — revolutionary indeed ! 

We have no right — no national right, and no political 
right — to treat the lower and outside elements of society on 
any other than the high and Christian rule — namely, that 
those who have are debtors to those who have not ; that those 
who are good are debtors to those who are bad ; that those 
who are refined are debtors to those who are unrefined ; that 
those who are superior are debtors to those who are inferior. 

In general, weak nations that stand beside Christian na- 
tions are destroyed. It is a painful thought, but it is true, 
that a colony of half -civilized men are less in danger in the 
neighborhood of savage men than in the neighborhood of civ- 
ilized men. So little do men know how to carry the power of 
civilization that it eats out the life of barbarous nations like a 
canker. The history of civilization in its influence on nations 
that are uncivilized has taught this. And the stronger and 
intenser the nature of those that form the colonies, the more 
certain the waste. 

I would not speak otherwise than well of our Puritan 
fathers. Once a year I eat dinner at Delmonico's, humbling 
myself and taking up my cross, together with my brethren of 
the New England Society, in memory of our forefathers who 
landed on Plymouth Rock. Far be it from us to undervalue 
that memory. We that would have pelted them with stones, 
if we had lived when they did, now build monuments over 
their graves, and pronounce eulogies on them. I think they 
meant to do well. They tried to do well by the Indians, but 
they did not know how ; and the Indians have wasted, and 
wasted, as before a swelling flood. As the ill-compacted bank 
is worn away by every pulsation of the waves, so the Indian 
tribes have been worn away. 

Here is this nation, so proud of its churches and acade- 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 543 

mies and schools. You would think, to hear us talk of our- 
selves, that we had just dropped out of heaven. "We are one 
of the most boastful nations in the world. If the Darwin 
theory be true, that we ascend from a lower stock, I think 
many of us came from the hens — for we never lay an egg 
without cackling immensely. We are proud of our civiliza- 
tion, of our Christianity, of our humanity, of our philan- 
thropy ; and we are sending missionaries all over the globe : — 
and that is right. But a weak nation cannot live by our side ; 
and the Indians that remain are just as certainly going under, 
before the progress of civilization, as last year's leaves are 
going under before the plow. It is only a question of time. 
A few may be preserved by inter-marriage with the whites, 
but that would only be burying them in a white sepulcher. 
Inferior nations cannot bear the domination of this strong 
Anglo-Saxon race. They are either destroyed or absorbed 
by it. 

How much benefit has Mexico derived from us ? We 
have cut and curved, and cut and carved, and now we are 
waiting to cut and carve once more. We are saying boldly, 
" Mexico has got to come in." Our thought. is, that it is the 
business of strong nations to eat up the weak ones, and thrive 
upon them. 

Now, there is no nation on the globe that has adopted the 
Christian principle,, and compelled public policy to act upon 
it — the principle, namely, that the strong must serve and 
care for the weak. We are acting, as a nation, on the prim- 
itive idea, according to the lion's ethics, that to the strong 
paw belongs the prey ; and yet, I believe we are not worse 
than other nations. The law of selfishness is almost the uni- 
versal law of civilized nations. Neither the law within na- 
tions, nor the law exterior to them, is comformable to Christ. 

It is quite in vain for us to say that we are a Christian 
nation, so long as we are so only in spots, here and there. 
You might as well say that it is summer on my farm, where 
the ground has thawed out enough to make it muddy, but not 
enough for corn to be planted, or for anything to grow, as 
that this nation, or any nation, is Christian in the true sense 
of that word. The snow is mainly gone, but it lies in patches 



544 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

here and there; there is just enough solar power to thaw the 
surface of the earth, that is all. After nearly two thousand 
years the power of Christianity has extended itself in intel- 
lectual directions, in creeds and dogmas, in the organization 
of churches, and methods of worship and government, in many 
ways ; but it has been for the most part felt in the family. 
The family has been the scene of its benign influence, and 
chiefly it has "kept in the family. As a force for molding na- 
tions and communities, its time is not yet come. There are 
no Christian nations. "There are no nations that act on the 
principle that it is the duty of strength to take care of weak- 
ness ; of goodness to take care of badness ; of culture to take 
care of vulgarity ; of purity to take care of impurity ; of 
wealth to take care of poverty; of prosperity to take care of 
misfortune. That is almost a heresy in the world yet. But 
it is the law of Christ. It is the law of God's Word. 

Apply this same principle to the administration of econ- 
omy with any nation. We feel in our country that we are to 
take care of things that are already well cared for : and there 
is an element of truth in it. For instance, New England has 
been the chief mental breeding-ground of the nation. From 
her, more than from any other quarter, came our original civic 
ideas. There has been more influence derived from the brains 
of the old New England than from those of any other section 
of the country. Though very admirable tendencies have come 
from all along the liue of the Atlantic, yet the tendencies 
which have had their rise in New England have been superior 
to any of these. Hence there are good reasons why New En- 
gland should be maintained in her power, and why any deca- 
dence of her schools and colleges should be looked upon with 
alarm. 

But, after all, not to the strong, especially, should strength 
be given, but to the weak. While there is to be conservation, 
the law of distribution should be such that the patriot and 
Christian should think, " Where are the ignorant masses ? 
Where are the parts of our own land that have no elevating 
institutions ?" 

When the wind begins to move, it goes toward vacuum, 
and not toward those places where there are other winds to 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 545 

keep it company ; when heat stirs the air, it tends toward 

places that are exhausted of heat ; and in accordance with 

the same great law which operates in these instances water 

knows how to run northward from the south, and southward 

from the north ; and the atmosphere knows how to wrap the 

earth around, and maintain an equilibrium ; but nations that 

call themselves Christian do not know how to obey this law 

of the greater serving the less, and of the stronger serving the 

weaker. 

" The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib ; but 
Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider." 

Churches, often, have not learned this law. They are 
mutual insurance companies. A church is a stock concern 
for the protection of its members. It is a close corporation 
established for the benefit of those who belong to it. But 
ought it not to be a light in a dark place ? In proportion to 
the darkness ought there not to be light thrown out from it ? 
Ought there not to go forth from the churches of our land an 
influence to those parts of it which are most neglected ? 
Ought not those who are most prosperous to carry succor to 
those who are most needy ? Ought not those who have 
plenty to consider those who lack ? 

To-day, throughout the whole South there is feebleness, 
want of means, distress, complication, by reason of disturb- 
ances occasioned by a reconstruction of political economy. 
Society there is going through a revolutionary period. Prop- 
erty has been destroyed, industry is crippled, there is paralysis 
in every department of enterprise. And toward that great 
land (ours, for we would not permit it to be anybody's else ; 
ours, because its inhabitants are bone of our bone and flesh 
of our flesh) should go our sympathy. Thither, very largely, 
should the stream of our beneficence tend. We should send 
teachers and preachers, and whatever instrumentalities may 
be needed, to restore again the waste that war has made. 

And westward, to a region untainted by the despotism of 
slavery, go the emigrant hordes of different nations and 
languages and customs, but united by the one element of 
personal liberty ; and there, where they were not able to 
carry their schools and their churches ; there where their 



546 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

whole energy is taxed for supplying the material conditions 

of life ; there, where they have. their huts to build, and their 

fences to make, and the tough, wiry surface of the prairie to 

rip up ; there, where the production of all the indispensable 

elements of civilization is enough to tax and exhaust their 

energy, how can they rise to the higher plane of development, 

and erect school-houses, and meeting-houses, and theological 

seminaries ? How can they surround themselves with the 

means of education and culture which it has required three 

centuries for us to unfold ? 

Now, in giving, you are to give according to the divine 

injunction, not expecting to receive any return. Here we 

come to the principle that is contained in the passage which 

I read you in the opening service this morning : 

" When thou makest a dinner or supper, call not thy friends nor 
thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbors, lest they 
also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee, but when thou 
makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and 
thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou 
ehalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just." 

We are not to seek our own kind. Our hospitality is not 
to be of that sort which will pay itself back again. Often 
what is called hospitality is simply trade. 

You are invited to a great party. Now, great parties 
may be very pleasant — they seldom are, yet they may be ; but 
why do you go to them ? Look really at the subtle secret 
motive which leads you to go. There is no sin in dressing 
gaily, and going to a party, and being courteous, and be- 
having well ; but you will have to give another party, or 
else you will be written out of that set, and it will be said of 
you, " They go to parties, but they do not give parties" ; as 
now and then you will hear it said of a man, " He takes 
drinks that others pay for, but he never pays for drinks that 
others take," or, (i He is very willing to smoke when I offer 
him a cigar, but he never offered a cigar to me." The 
feeling of obligation to make return for things received is 
nowhere stronger than in the matter of entertainments. 

Now you are not, according to the Christian doctrine, at 
liberty to invite persons because you like them, or because 
they have invited you, simply. If you only invite such, you 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 547 

are merely traffickers ; and the worst kind of traffickers, be- 
cause you are trafficking in affection, hospitality, and other 
sacred elements. It is base to make merchandise of such 
things; and Christ, in his condemnation of it, uses the strong- 
est language, and commands us not to call in those who can 
pay us again, but to call in the poor who cannot repay us ; 
and he assures us that we shall have our reward in that high 
moral joy which disinterestedness brings to every man, here 
and hereafter. This law, if it were universally adopted, 
would transform the economies of things all over this land. 

To-day is our day for taking up a collection in behalf of 
Home Missions. Of all the collections that we take up, I 
think I feel most interested in this one. I am a child of 
Home Missions. It was from the treasury of the Home Mis- 
sionary Society that I took the money with which I came 
back to New England to get married — and it was "business" 
then, to come back ! It took me two full weeks to come from 
Cincinnati, and it cost me two hundred and fifty dollars to 
come and return. Having returned, I settled in Lawrence- 
burg, and had two hundred dollars for my yearly salary. 
During that year, and the next, and only the next, I was 
a pensioner on this Society. I went into a town that could 
not have supported me, and into a church that was not 
half as large as our present lecture-room, with a mere hand- 
ful of people ; and I had to look to the churches in New 
England — this grand Home Missionary Society — for my daily 
bread. I never shall forget it. May my loaf grow small 
and waste, if I forget to contribute to the prosperity and 
wealth of this Society, which is preaching the Gospel every- 
where ! 

What is this Society doing ? It is undertaking to pay a 
part, say one-half, of the salary of persons in new places 
and enable them to maintain themselves until, by the natural 
growth of their parishes, they shall become self-sustaining. 
One after another, they are coming to a condition in which 
they can sustain themselves. To-day, there are nearly a 
thousand ministers in new settlements and States, clear 
to the Pacific coast, preaching the G-ospel, who would not 
be able to preach if it were not for the support which they 



548 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 

receive from the Home Missionary Society. They are 
gathering church after church, and they are making the wil- 
derness to bud and blossom as the rose. 

Next to the Methodist circuit rider, I think is the Amer- 
ican Home missionary. No theological difference, no secta- 
rian pride should prevent us from paying tribute where it is 
due ; and nothing shall prevent me from giving to the 
Methodists that credit which they deserve. I lived where I 
saw their work, and as long as I live I shall thank God for 
the Methodist preacher, in those circuits where, without him, 
there would have been barbarism unillumined. They have 
. been a light from the beginning. We owe more of the prim- 
itive development of Christianity in the West to Methodist 
circuits than to any other one agency. After them came 
others who carried the work on higher ; and they were largely 
of Home missionaries, who went out from the East, and lived 
and died in the West, or are living there now, laying the 
foundation for many generations to come. We are debtors 
to them because they need ; we are debtors to the West, 
because it is necessitous ; and, we are debtors to this country, 
not simply because it is our country, but because the South, 
and the South- West, and the West, to the Pacific Ocean, are 
in want of those institutions which have done so much for 
society in the East ; and we should contribute to their sup- 
port according to this law. 

Brethren, there are many of you who, when you were 
young, had serious thoughts about preaching the Gospel ; 
but God overruled your desire, your way was blocked, and 
you were prevented from carrying out your intention, by the 
failure of your health or some other Providential circum- 
stance. Yet you never ceased to regret that you could not 
have preached ; and your boyish wish has always been a sort 
of romance or sacred inward feeling with you. But, although 
you never did as you wished to, it is in your power to preach 
by another's voice. You can send in your place one whose 
tongue is loosed, and who has power of mind and heart to do 
that which you wanted to do. 

There is many a woman who consecrated her son to the 
Christian ministry ; with such a pride as only a mother knows 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 549 

how to feel, she meant that her boy should go forth and preach. 
But he died ; and henceforth there was a void in the mother's 
heart ; but it is in her power to open that lip in another, and 
let one who came not from her loins stand in the place of 
her dead son, and do the work that she meant he should do. 

There are many of you that would like to be preachers, 
but you have not the requisite education, or your circum- 
stances will not admit of your going out to preach ; yet you 
can preach by proxy. You can help men preach in the wil- 
derness, on the mountain-side, among the mines, and along 
the far-off ocean. You can make yourselves felt all over 
these United States. And this American Home Missionary 
Society is the agency through which we contribute means to 
enable men to go forth and preach where the people cannot 
have the Gospel unless they receive it wholly or m part 
from us. 

Do not say, now, I pray you, one word about the times. 
I do not believe there are many of you that would be hurt by 
contributing. If you are on the eve of bankruptcy then you 
ought not to contribute ; but if you are in comfortable cir- 
cumstances it seems to me that this law is upon you — the 
great law of strength and of having. You owe your means, 
your power, yourselves, to those who are less fortunate than 
you ; and I throw open to you the great field of the South 
and West. 

Here is a society that is putting forth a thousand men to 
labor in the cause of God, who are dependent for at least one 
half of their support upon the prosperous churches in the 
East ; and a church as prosperous as this has been and is can- 
not be exempt from the duty of aiding them. The whole 
land needs you, and has a right to your power and influence. 
I therefore beg of you to make a generous contribution in 
money, or by subscriptions upon the papers which have been 
distributed through the house ; — and I believe you will do it. 



550 THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 



PEAYER BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We draw near to thee, this morning, our Father, not as suppliants, 
but with grateful testimony for thy goodness. We are supplied, and 
more than supplied. Our cup runneth over. So great are the kind- 
nesses of thy providence, and so great are the manifestations of thy 
love in Jesus Christ, that our hearts say, Surely, goocn^ss and mercy 
shall follow us all the days of our life ; and wherever ¥d are we shall 
dwell in the house of the Lord forever. For where is there, under 
the sky, a place that is not thy dwelling? We rejoice, O God, in thy 
goodness, which is a stream flowing from under the Throne. All 
power and majesty are in the Throne. All bounties come from thy 
wisdom, and power, and majesty. Thou art, thyself, the light whose 
beams stream forth forever more. Thou art infinite love, and thou 
art forever serving and doing good to those in heaven, and those on 
earth, and those everywhere, that need. By thy power thou art 
fashioning, and forming, and bringing forth, and exalting. It is thy 
nature to do these things. Thus thou dost work upon things that are 
infinitely small, and remote, and imperfect. Thou art an eternal 
Workman, bringing forth the universe from all that is low. With 
infinite patience thou art awaiting men's development, educating 
and exalting them. Thou art carrying forward the work which thou 
hast begun into infinite realms beyond our present knowledge. And 
we wonder and adore in contemplating these things. If thou art such 
a One, how poor are we! If thou art the servant of all, and if thy 
strength is for weakness, if thy purity is for sin, if thy goodness is for 
selfishness, and if thy whole being is to be the food of those who 
need, what manner of men ought we to be, if we call ourselves by 
thy name! We rebuke ourselves for the narrow range of our kind- 
ness; for our want of disinterestedness and bounty; for our self-serv- 
ice; for all the various ways in which we seek to serve ourselves 
through others, instead of serving others for their own sake. May 
we know what it is to be disciples of Christ, children of God, in the 
inner man, and not by saying, Lord, Lord! 

Grant, we pray thee, to everyone of us, a more profound convic- 
tion of the hatefulness of sin. More and more may we detest selfish- 
ness. More and more may we learn rather to serve than to be 
served. 

We pray that we may learn patience of thee, and practice it by 
following thine example. Thou that didst suffer, and revile not, but 
wert led as a lamb to the slaughter, grant that we may learn of thy 
meekness and of thy gentleness, and find rest unto our souls that are 
disturbed by pride, and by avarice, and by passion. O, grant that the 
life of Jesus, and the principle of his life, may enter into us, and that 
there may be spoken to the tumult and storm of our passions that 
word of peace which shall allay them. 

We pray that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon us this 
morning, as we are gathered here for worship. Accept our thought- 
worship, and all the unuttered adoration of our deepest feelings. 
Accept that which we would, and do not. 

Grant, we pray thee, that more and more we may rejoice in the 



THE DEBT OF STRENGTH. 551 

Lord, and not in our outward circumstance or estate. Wilt thou 
give us thy succor to-day, according as thine eye beholds that there is 
need. For uiider how much prosperity there is yet great sorrow! 
How many that are sealed and closed unto the eyes of men, need 
thy compassion and thy care! Thou that lookest within, we pray 
that thou wilt discern their innermost want. Grant that those 
needs which we ourselves do not discern, which have not disclosed 
themselves to us, but that yet work pain, may this day be touched by 
thy Spirit. Cleanse us in thought, and in fountain of thought; in 
feeling, and in the sources of feeling. Renew the inward man, and 
purity it, that it may be righteous, and pure, and peaceful, and lov- 
ing. Dwell in us. Make our hearts such that thou canst dwell in 
them. Sanctify all sorrow, all disappointment, all thwartings and 
overthro wings, all mistakes, all sins, all stumblings. Recover thy 
servants out of every ill. We pray, not so much that thou wilt 
answer their prayer for outward prosperity, as that thou wilt be gi a- 
cious unto their cries. Grant that, whatever may befall the outward 
man, the inward man may be renewed day by day. If our portion 
in this life is not desirable, if our bread be bitter on earth, grant, we 
pray thee, that we may be sustained by the abiding consciousness of 
a better life hereafter, where we shall see thee, and be as thou art. 
By the discipline of sin and sorrow in the world that now is, may we 
be prepared for the glory and joy of the life that is to come. May 
bereavements, fears, sorrows of every name, shames, limitations, 
wants, cares, all troubles that come to the soul, bring to us this day 
that divine blessing which shall turn them into messengers of good. 

We pray that thou wilt bless not ourselves alone, but all those who 
worship in all churches everywhere. Grant that thy servants may 
no longer dispute about instruments, and ordinances, and outward 
forms, but be united in a genuine desire to succor their fellow-men. 
In that desire, may they meet together, and work hand in hand, 
and heart to heart. 

We pray for peace in all our land, where brethren are arrayed 
against each other; where men overreach men; where power exerts 
itself in ways that are selfish. O let the breath of the gospel of 
peace be breathed throughout this nation. May all the outward life 
of society, and all its inward institutions, be conformed to the truth 
as it is in Christ Jesus. We pray that the knowledge of Christ may 
be spread abroad into every part of our land. May all classes of men 
know of the great salvation, and experience the divine power, and 
be raised from the carnal life into a truly spiritual life. 

Establish thy cause not only in this nation, but in every nation. 
O, let the time come when this world shall no longer roll eclipsed. 
Make it shine out, an orb redeemed, ordained, with the inward 
light that thou shalt grant unto it, by thine own indwelling. May 
the day come when the voice crying to the nations shall be, The 
kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever! Reign, thou that art 
Lord of lords and King of kings — reign in every heart, in every 
nation, in all time, 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen. 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 



44 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day- 
is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith ?"— Matt. vi. 30. 



Different periods develop a necessity of explaining, de- 
fending, and urging different truths. In our day there is no 
other one hitherto generally received truth that is so much 
assailed and so likely to slip from under our firm trust as the 
doctrine of God's particular providence. The steady advance 
of science, in the knowledge of material things and of the 
laws that govern them, up to a certain point will loosen men's 
confidence in that great truth. It has done it. It is doing 
it. It will continue to do it. But beyond a certain point 
science itself will come back to that truth, and bring new 
illumination, new taith, and multiply blessings. 

It is not worth while, therefore, for Christian people 
hastily to cast away their confidence in this particular re- 
spect. No man, I think, will doubt me when I say that 
this great truth bears such a relation to the teaching of 
Christ that, if you take it away, you pull the string out 
from the necklace, and the pearls all scatter ; that you 
destroy the cohesive element in his teaching, dissolve, disin- 
tegrate it ; that the process by which you can rid yourself 
of so explicit and repeated a statement of truth as that 
of divine providence, even in particulars and minute things, 

Sunday Morning. March 1, 1874. T^esson : Matt. vi. 13-34. Hymns : (Plymoutb 
Collection) : Nos. 199, io*. 



556 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

is a process by which you can cast out anything ; and that the 
rejection of it substantially involves your faith in revelation, 
and in the inspired Scripture itself. 

Why should one want to be rid of it ? I can conceive 
reasons why men should undertake to rid themselves of the 
doctrine of responsibility ; I can understand how men should 
wish to rid themselves of the restraints that are imposed 
upon their appetites ; I can understand how men should 
attempt to sheathe those fears that are shaking them from 
the Word of God. They are painful in .the time that is, and 
they threaten pain in the time that is to come. That men 
should seek in various ways to mask them, to disguise them, 
or to smother them, is not strange. But why men should 
seek to disabuse themselves of faith in one of the most 
benign of doctrines, and why a world that is full of the 
sunshine of God's thought and love should be changed into a 
world without a God that cares for it, I cannot understand. 
Why a process of time which is developing the future under 
the auspices of watch-care, thought, pity, and tenderness 
should be thrown overboard, I cannot understand. Why you 
should remit the world and its population to fate, or to a 
doctrine of natural law, which, when it is carried to its 
ultimate form, is as poor as a bone would be without flesh — 
hard and cold — this I cannot understand. I can understand 
very well how men might try to kick winter out of Lapland ; 
but how, when summer comes to the Laplander, he should 
attempt to kick it out, I never could understand. And why 
men should attempt to destroy the faith in an overruling 
Mind, in love maintaining providence and so supplementing 
everything, and substituting for it a belief in fatalism, I can- 
not understand. It is so needful for a race to find its way up 
from animalhood to manhood, that there should be some- 
thing more than its limitations of human faculty acting 
amidst gigantic influences of material law, and acting, also, 
under the swell of human society, through long periods. 
Those limitations, under the circumstances, are such that 
men would naturally, one would suppose, cry out for a pilot 
or a guide. 

This doctrine of providence is the doctrine of the inspec- 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 557 

tion of God. Known unto God are his and curs from the 
beginning. That his eye should mark the path cJ nations, 
and that, in their slow inarch from day to day, he sac~Id 
watch the individual elements in national life, is an infinitely 
pleasant thought. The destruction of the faith of men in 
the special providence of God largely withdraws the very 
means which they have of finding God out. That is, by 
pronouncing events which we know and conceive of as divine 
visitations to be simply natural forces, we substantially drive 
the thought of God out of phenomenal creation, and call 
effects the result of unconscious nature. 

Now, the way in which men learn the reality of the divine 
Being is by an association of the thought of divinity with 
the physical globe, and with themselves in connection with 
it; and if you remit this view to the fatalism of simple 
materiality, to all intents and purposes you teach men 
atheism. That will be the ultimate, if not the immediate, 
effect. The consciousness of God with us, hearing us, sym- 
pathizing with us, giving us warmth, and hope, and comfort 
— I cannot understand how men should be ready to give this 
up, and especially the unfortunate, the weak, the downtrod- 
den, who constitute the great bulk of the human race. I 
can understand how men, who, under the influence in their 
fathers of such faiths as this, have been developed into 
civilization, and carried up to strength and wealth in society 
or among themselves, should at last begin to feel that there 
was no need of that doctrine ; but how the great underlying, 
mass of mankind, who are living in twilight, can get along 
without any faith of an overruling God who takes part in 
human affairs, inspiring, controlling, arranging, adjusting, 
and making things very different from what they would be 
if it were not for him, 1 cannot understand. Nor can I 
understand how one should look on the wants of men and 
desire to destroy such a faith as this. 

Since, then, it is not a thing which it is desirable to get 
rid of; since it does not present itself as an evil; since it 
come to us benignly, as a great blessing and benefit to the 
world, is there any good reason for depriving men of the 
comfort of this hope of a special and particular divine provi- 



558 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

deuce, from which they may derive the feeling that they are 
2>rovided for ? 

The only objection that I have ever known to be urged 
against the doctrine of such a providence is this : that the 
facts are against it. 

Well, are they against it ? Have there been such discov- 
eries made in regard to natural law that men can say that 
science and revelation are fairly pitted against each other 
on the doctrine of a particular, personal, divine providence in 
the affairs of men ? 

Science declares that this world is governed by great laws, 
whose actiou is definite, constant, and unchangeable ; and 
that to teach that these laws are intermitted, overridden, or 
in any way interrupted, so that effects are produced without 
the operation of regular causes, is to destroy the constancy 
of nature and to contradict facts and observations. This is 
substantially the ground on which scientific men dispute the 
doctrine of an overruling providence — the ground, namely, 
that it interferes and changes results from what they would 
be ; in other words, that the constancy of causation in natu- 
ral law repudiates and rejects the idea of divine interference. 
I think I state the principle fairly. 

Now, let us suppose that suddenly this world is emptied 
of all its intelligent living creatures, so that not a philosopher 
is left ; so that not a civilized citizen is left ; so that all the 
hordes of Asia suddenly slumber, and mingle, like the leaves, 
with the dust ; and so that in all Africa there is not a savage, 
in all Europe there is not a Christian, and in all America 
there is not a single living, thinking soul: while lions are left, 
and elephants are left, and tigers are left, and all things are 
left except intelligence and the will that is coupled with it. 
What would become of this world if such a state of things 
were to exist ? If the earth were emptied of its human 
population, how long would it be before that which is the 
glory of the globe — namely, the artificial or developed forms 
of nature and of society — would follow in this retrograde 
movement, and perish from under the sun ? How long 
would it be before the cultivated lands would all be over- 
grown with weeds, and the forests would resume their sway, 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 559 

And the houses would fall to the ground, and the wharves 
would rot, and the ships would decay, and the warehouses 
would go to ruin, and the wares would crumble to dust ? 
When two or three hundred years had rolled around without 
a man on the globe, all machines would be at an end, all 
factories would have ceased their work, all gardens and farms 
would be gone to waste, all canals would have been turned 
into rivers or have perished utterly, and nothing would be 
left in the world but an absolute wilderness. 

What, under such circumstances, would become of natu- 
ral laws ? They wo aid be all that yet remained. Gravity, 
electricity, light, heat, magnetism — all those great natural 
laws which make summer and winter, and create the motions 
of the earth and the seasons, would remain. The substan- 
tial, material laws which are said to be collective Gocl — these 
would remain ; but man being taken away, what would bo 
the result ? All that makes time and the world of any value 
would perish. Nothing would remain but natural laws ; and 
there would be no products from them. 

And suppose, when the world had swung round and 
round, empty of its population, and had reverted again to 
the barbaric and savage conditions of nature — suppose that 
then mankind, suddenly, by a divine fiat, should be put 
back into the world again, and the forge should be 
kindled, and the plow should start, and the hammer 
should be heard, and villages and cities should be reared, 
and the power of agriculture should be spread throughout the 
earth: how quickly would the effects of nature be changed ! 
Take away man's intelligence, and the globe goes back to 
nothing, and becomes a mere skeleton, or a bundle of unfruit- 
ful forces, and is a rude wilderness ; shove back the intelli- 
gence of man, and what do natural laws do ? Instantly they 
feel an inspiration. Somewhere or other they have a power 
under them by which they begin to produce orchards, gar- 
dens, houses, fleets, armies, libraries, all elements that are 
needful to clothe the earth, and make it beautiful. Natural 
law without man is a mere barbaric, fruitless force ; but nat- 
ural law with man is a power of civilization. For what is 
civilization but the fruitfulness of natural laws when they 



560 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

have been touched and inoculated by the power of the human 
mind ? A globe with only natural laws, without men to gov- 
ern everything, would be a globe as empty as the moon ; but 
a globe with natural laws that have intelligence teaching 
them is as fruitful as the Garden of Eden, and as beautiful. 

The difference, then, is not in the change of the natural 
law, bnt simply in this fact : that natural law, when human 
intelligence is present, is magnificent in its f ruitfulness ; while, 
when human intelligence is absent, it loses all power of fruit- 
fulness, and becomes a void, vulgar, coarse, hard, aimless 
force. So, without intelligence in connection with them, nat- 
ural laws are raw forces that do the coarse work. They are 
material. All productive forces of law that are known are 
those which have human intelligence joined to them ; and the 
inoculation of natural laws with mind-force is the indispensa- 
ble condition of variety and fruitfulness. 

Nature, cerebrated, is civilization. Mind is itself a conge- 
ries of natural laws ; and they are the highest form of natural 
laws. All natural laws stand in relations to each other of 
co-ordination ; or, if you please to say so, according to the 
modern view, they interchange, and a correlation of forces 
takes place. 

Nov/, all physical forces receive their crown, or reach up 
and take on their highest functions, in man's brain system. 
So that we have not natural law and man, who stands apart 
from it, but natural law working, as I had almost said, in 
vacuo when men are absent, and natural law working with 
its most capital development when men are interposed. 
And as there is subordination outside of us ; as there is inter- 
ference with laws, so that fire does not always burn, nor 
water always wet, nor stones always fall when let go ; as you 
can use one law to overrule or direct another ; so natural laws 
that are lifted up and incorporated in the human mind are 
superior to all others, and can be put in opposition to them, 
can ride them, can vary them, can turn them withersoever 
they will, and can make them work. 

We see this in common things ; and Christ more than 
hints that, by an extraordinary increase of the force of those 
natural laws which are represented in the human mind, as- 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 561 

cendancy is gained over the lower and outer physical laws 
in such a way that, by faith, and by prayer, and by rising 
into certain states, men may control things that are around 
them, and that thus the globe may be made subservient to the 
mind-force of the race, as the body is made subservient to 
the mind-force of the man. 

This is a matter which is not well understood ; which is 
yet obscure : which is far from being explored or mapped 
out ; but there was an irregular indication of this principle 
which appeared in the days of Christ and his apostles, and 
which was said by our Saviour to be a power of God operating 
through men, and acting on the elements, and controlling 
disease and death itself. Irregular indications of it also per- 
vade the history of the race down to our time, when what are 
called abnormal developments, strange phenomena in the 
spiritual realm, are almost universal. 

Now, all these developments, the phenomena which are 
the subjects of so much thought, and which excite so much 
curiosity, I do not attempt to explain. I do not undertake 
to speak of their character, of their limits, of their metes and 
bounds ; I only say that as the human mind is itself the high- 
est type of natural law, as it has supremacy over other laws, 
and as the Saviour declared that by a certain elevation it 
would have wonderful power in directing material forces, and 
as we see instances of it from time to time, it is not too much 
to say that the time will come when man's brain will direct 
physical laws in the world at large as to-day it controls phys- 
ical laws in the hand, in the foot, or in any part of the body. 

I do not think that the race has come to the end yet. I 
do not think it has yet evolved its full power. I do not 
think we understand either the structure of the powers 
within, or their relations to the powers without. 

Natural law, then, in order to be effectual, needs brains. 

Now, we come back to the point where we started. Here 
is the doctrine that was declared by our Lord in. a hundred 
forms, and in a most emphatic manner — namely, that God, 
the Brain of the universe, controls events on this globe by a 
providence of love and kindness, so that "all things work 
together for good to them that love him." But Science 



562 SPECIAL PROVIDERS. 

comes in and says, "It is not so. God has made the great 
machinery of natural laws, and wound them up, so that they 
will run to eternity, or as near to it as they want to. Ho is 
busy with other things, and the vast apparatus is working ; 
and nothing can interfere with it ; but if you obey the laws of 
nature you will get what they have for you." How much has 
a natural law for me ? Is there a lav/ of nature that I can set 
to work in my field, and have it raise potatoes ? So far as 
that is concerned, I shall get no potatoes so long as I rely 
upon natural laws simply. It is not until I have inoculated 
my farm with myself that it brings me anything besides 
weeds and stones. Where do the products of my land come 
from ? "From natural laws," you say. Yes, if you include 
me as one of those laws. My thinking power ; my experience ; 
my ability to employ the dews and the rains, summer and 
winter, ten thousand physical elements — if you include these 
as belonging to natural law, I will not dispute you. If you 
admit that I am supreme over these things, having power to 
understand them, and knowing how to harness them, and 
drive them into my fields, and make them plow, and plant, 
and hoe, and reap, and thresh, and grind, then I grant that 
you are right. If you understand that it is mind-power in 
the farmer that causes natural law to yield his harvests, I 
agree with you. 

Have I not a power over natural law which enables me to 
make my providence myself ? and is G-od weaker than I am ? 
Cannot I make a house, if I have money ? How many men 
I can control ! I can control them by the action of my will 
acting on theirs. Up rise the stone walls and the brick w T alls; 
on goes the roof : and inside spring forth all the refinements 
which belong to modern dwellings. I created that house, 
with its equipments, it is said. I did not strike a blow ; but 
with my knowledge I set to work fifty men ; and they pre- 
pared the stones, the brick, the lumber, the glass, all the 
materials that -are required. No man Ibuilds a house without 
starting a thousand laborers, first or last. And the architect, 
or master, controls them all. It is his brain that calls them 
into action. All the numerous handiworks and wonderful 
complications are carried on under the inspiration of his 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 563 

touch. His thought, his will is the influence which brings 
multitudinous forces to work on material things. And so he 
builds a house, and supplies it with everything that is neces- 
sary to make it convenient and comfortable, simply by the 
exercise of his mind -power. 

My father stood surrounded with, thirteen children blos- 
soming about him. Eleven of them grew to man's estate, and 
there was not one of them that was evil. They were all 
healthy ; they were all intelligent ; they were all active 5 
not one of them has gone to the poor-house, or been 
hung ; and had not he something to do with their successful 
development ? Was it the tides that brought it about ? Was 
it the eclipses ? Was it summer and winter ? Was it gravity ? 
Was it the correlation of forces ? Dominant among all the 
natural causes (and there were any number of them) which 
led to this result, was the thought of my father's and my 
mother's brain. They made use of natural laws in such a way 
that a virtuous family grew up around them. 

But there were other instances in which large households 
dissolved and went to pieces. The want of righteousness in 
somebody's brain was the reason. Natural laws in the one 
case worked virtue ; and natural laws in the other case worked 
vice. Natural laws in the one case brought arms of sweet 
flesh warm with love about the young, and we had, step by 
step, the complicated and wonderful development of the 
wisely-ordered household ; and in the other case natural laws 
brought sickness here, and dissipation there, and scattering 
everywhere. What was it that produced those effects ? 
Cerebration, thought, will. 

All over the world such things are going on. And will 
our philosophers tell us that natural laws are fixed, and must 
go right along ? There are natural laws that act throughout 
the world ; and they act more or less under human control. 
A natural law is a horse, and man rides it and makes it stop 
or work at his will. He changes the face of the earth by 
knowing how to use natural laws. There is, in this world, 
nothing that is so usable, nothing that is so plastic, nothing 
that, being resisted, is so irresistible, but that being used is so 
docile and obedient, as a natural law. 



564 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

You understand that I use this term "natural law" as a 
convenient conventional phrase, representing generally natu- 
ral or physical forces, though properly the mode of their 
action. 

I am myself a natural law — a complex natural law — the 
highest form of natural law. My head is "better than my 
feet, though my feet are useful to me. My body is a part of 
the material globe, and is subject to various influences which 
act upon matter. But, after all, I live in my brain ; and that 
which gives power, continuity, comprehensive planning, and 
ultimate results, commanding the day and night, the seasons, 
the heavens and the earth, so that they bring forth abun- 
dantly, not alone material things, but social and spiritual 
things as well, causing the world to bud and blossom as the 
rose — that is my will. Comprehensively regarded, the con- 
trol of these myriad elements for the accomplishment of my 
purposes is the work of my brain. And I stand, by reason 
of my brain, superior to the clod ; to stone and wood ; to the 
.seasons ; to all things in the outward world ; and I make 
them bow down to me. So the sun is my messenger ; the 
moon is my witness ; and the stars work for me and for 
others. I can make the ocean serve me ; the rivers are 
my workingmen, unpaid and r.nbribed, who never strike 
for fewer hours ; and all things on the globe are my ser- 
vau ts. 

Under such circumstances, it does me good to hear men 
come out of the laboratory, and say, " There cannot be any 
providence." "Why?" "Oh, because God never meddles 
with natural lav/." " Well, then, he is not so ^meddlesome as 
I am." "God has fixed his laws, and they go right along, 
and what they have for you you will get ; but do not expect 
any special blessings." 

If I, that am allied to the clod, and that am comparatively 
powerless, can understand natural laws, and change the face 
of the globe, and make a providence of virtue or a providence 
of vice, a providence of prosperity or a providence of adver- 
sity ; if it is in my power to use natural laws, who stand 
under them, and am more or less restrained by them through 
my ignorance, how much more can He who stands over the 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 565 

whole machinery of the world, and looks down upon it, make 
it work for him and his purposes ! 

Men seem to think that God can do this, but that he does 
not. It is said that God does not work miracles for men. 
Who says that he does ? I do not. I say that the teaching 
of the New Testament is simply this : " Work out your own 
salvation;" "For it is God that worketh in you." Ah! 
when God wants to make a providence, he knows what natu- 
ral laws to use. He does not think it necessary to do this, 
that, or the other thing for me ; but he touches me, and 
makes me feel, and makes me plan, and makes me industri- 
ous, so that I become skillful and efficient. 

Even my mistakes are providences ; for, as an axe is made 
sharp by that which it loses on the grindstone, so men are 
made sharp by that which they lose through blunders that fit 
them for the next encounter. 

When, therefore, God wants to work a providence, he 
does not think it necessary that he should whisper, and say, 
" Clouds, go down and rain on Beecher's farm" — not that at 
all ; he says to me, ' * Subsoil your land ;" and when I have 
done that, I shall have a cistern which will supply all the 
moisture that my crops need, without the aid of plumbers, 
thank God, and without any pipes. 

So God inspires human intelligence in dealing with the 
natural globe. Everybody has supposed that to work out a 
providence it was necessary that the divine Spirit should take 
hold of outside physical laws, and bring them, by a divine 
impulse, to work for men. That may be true in part ; I do 
not deny it ; I think it is a doctrine that can be defended ; 
but this I say, as the result of observation and study : that 
the divine soul works upon the human soul, and is in sympa- 
thy with it ; and that the human soul, inspired, has power 
over natural law. Everyone who uses his body under the 
control of his will, or brain-power, shows that he has power 
over the natural laws which are around him ; and if God 
inspires him, and stimulates him, and pours the light of 
joy into him, does he not cause that man to make a provi- 
dence ? 

How do you teach your child to make a fortune ? 



566 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

"Well, you set an object before him. By your mind- 
power you wake up his curiosity ; you excite his ambi- 
tion ; you quicken his love of property, his love of influence 
and his love of praise. You also point out lines of conduct, 
here and there, for his guidance. By reason of your stimula- 
tion he earns and accumulates wealth ; and when he is old, 
he says, ' ' My father was one of those wise men who deter- 
mined not to leave me riches, or to earn them for me ; and I 
thank God that I had a father who taught me to acquire 
property for myself. The course which he pursued with me 
was the true one ; for in the long run nobody is fit to have 
property but the man who earns it." In such a case, the 
father is a providence for the child, and God is a providence 
for the father. God working through the cerebral economy 
of the father, and the father working through the cerebral 
economy of the child, and the child working on this natu- 
ral result of natural forces. 

Men say, " The teaching of the New Testament, that the 
hairs of our head are all numbered ; that not a sparrow falls 
to the ground without God's notice ; that we are to have no 
anxious thought because God thinks for us ; and that we are 
to seek first the kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness, 
and all these things shall be added unto us — this teaching is 
not philosophical ;" but I say that it is philosophical! Let us 
look at the last of these declarations— namely, " Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto you." The truth involved here 
is this : that the lower forms of organized brain control the 
lower forms of matter ; and that as you carry the brain up by 
organization, it becomes more potential, and controls forms 
of matter that are higher. The man who has the most moral 
impulse, the highest inspiration, most easily appreciates 
influences and effects. What a man's true nature is depends 
upon the height to which you can develop him. It used to 
be understood "that nature in a man was what he was when 
he was born ; but it is now coming to be recognized that 
nature in a man is that which he can come to by legitimate, 
normal development. A man's nature is that which he has 
at the end, and not that which he has at the beginning. 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 567 

And the more you develop a man toward God, toward 
spirituality, toward the supremer forms of intellection and 
intelligence, the more easily does he control the senses 
and the lower elements with which he is called to deal. 
If men did "seek first the Kingdom of God and his 
righteousness," and make themselves more ample and more 
royal in their manhood, if they were more self-control- 
ling, if they were more spiritual, if they were more intense 
in their faith, they would have clearer plans, and clearer fore- 
sight, and greater power. A generation of such men would 
work wonders in all departments of society ; and the declara- 
tion, " Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, 
and all things shall be added unto you," would be verified in 
their experiences. 

So, we are under a scheme of things in which, without 
weariness or slumber, without shadow or turning, the great 
Thought-power of the universe, the Fountain of Inspiration, 
the Center of knowledge, which guides all things, uses natural 
laws, that are embosomed and embodied in human intelli- 
gence, and by them creates friendships, inspires industry, 
produces wealth, develops instruments, enlarges civilization,. 
and builds the soul higher and higher. He himself does it by 
the use of natural laws — not those lower and coarse ones which 
you think of when natural laws are mentioned, but that won- 
drous, manifold, complex system of natural laws which en- 
velops the educated intelligence of a civilized and Christian 
man. 

So, then, if science has no reason to object to this doc- 
trine of a special providence, that is preeminently to be de- 
sired, and if it has been declared by our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ to be absolutely true, why should we not take 
comfort in believing it ? 

"Ah, but," you will say to me, "if God does all things, 
does not his doing them tend to indolence on the part of 
men ? " He does not do ■ them in the sense of relieving men 
from all responsibility. Some persons seem to think that the 
doctrine of providence is a doctrine which respresents God as 
bestowing blessings on men as one, seeing children below him, 
puts his hand in his pocket, and takes out sugar-plums, and 



568 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

drops them down, that they may scramble for them ; but it 
is not such a providence that I mean : I mean a providence 
like that by which a loving mother educates her children. It 
is a providence which says to me, "Work, tuorh ; I am work- 
ing in you, wokk !" It is a grand providence. It is the best 
that is used in the world. 

A pilot, standing at the wheel, gives it one little hitch, 
and says to the bow, "Turn yourself" ; and thus the will of 
the pilot, acting through that wheel, makes the bow or stern 
move this way or that way, as the case may be. It is the 
man at the helm, directing physical forces by his mind- 
power, that produces the result. 

God, in working by his providence, operates with discrim- 
ination in regard to the moral structure of man, through 
whom he works. This is the very idea of natural law work* 
ing in accordance with principles of right and wrong. 

When, therefore, men say in respect to any set of circum- 
stances, that when they pray to God he will make things 
thus and so, and that they may fold their hands and wait, do 
you suppose Divine providence will do that ? I do not. I 
can conceive of emergencies in the history of nations when 
dramatic actions might be better than institutions, and more 
impressive to the imagination ; I can understand how the 
hand of God might open a path through the Bed Sea and let 
his people pass, or how he might send plague after plague to 
desolate Egypt; I can see how, as on a great back-ground, there 
might be these workings out of the Divine providence to im- 
press men until institutions should, by legitimate and normal 
education, be established ; I can perceive that such things 
might be wise and proper ; but these things do not represent 
the particular method by which Divine providence works. 
As a general thing, it works through great natural laws, and 
you are one of them. It works on natural laws through you. 
It wakes you up, and sets you to work, and punishes you 
when you do wrong, and rewards you when you do right. 
Providence works on you and around you ; it works in you 
and outside of you. It co-ordinates influences, and brings 
them together in such ways that the world is at last coming 
to recognize that rectitude is synonymous with prosperity. 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 569 

The great animal kingdom in the woods are hungry, and 
they roar and raven, and they think of nothing but to stop 
the aching of the belly ; and having done that, they creep 
back to their dens, and sleep, and wake again to eat, and eat 
to sleep. That is well enough for them, because right and 
wrong have no relations to them. 

But in the great higher creation — in the human family — 
little by little there has been, through the experience of men, 
the great fact that right is the best policy. Truth, purity, 
self-denial, industry, frugality — these are the timbers that 
have been hewed out ; and what a foundation has been 
laid ! What a vast accumulation, at last, has been made by 
Providence working through a congeries of natural laws ! 
It may not be wise, therefore, to say in respect to any 
particular thing, "This proceeds directly from the will of 
God." 

A man's child dies, and he says, "This is a mysterious 
providence." Well, was it not a mysterious providence when 
the child lived ? It is said, "When a man was going along 
the street one day, to his wedding, a brick fell off from a 
chimney, and struck him on the head ; and he was laid dead." 
And the preacher will say, "It was a strange and mysterious 
providence." Well, there was another young man, on the 
same day, going through that same street, to his wedding ; 
and a brick did not fall and hit him ; was not that event 
just as much a providence as the other ? You think that ex- 
clamation points are the whole of literature, and that only 
here and there an event which startles you is providential ; 
whereas, ten thousand events, and combinations of them, are 
all proceeding on precisely the same plan — namely, the work- 
ing together of the soul and mind of God and the soul and 
mind of men. According to this plan, under the divine 
guidance, myriads of results are worked out which you do not 
notice ; but now and then one steps out more clearly and 
dramatically, and you call that a providence. It is a provi- 
dence, and there is a providence all the time. Good and bad, 
light and shade, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity, 
things present and things to come, all alike are God's. We 
are living under a cope where we are just as certainly divinely 



570 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 

thought of and cared for as children trader the rooi of a 
father are paternally thought of and cared for. 

I do not know how much comfort that gives you, but it 
gives me a good deal. It is a great comfort to me, when I 
look up and around, to see that there is something besides 
air ; that there is something besides sun, moon and stars ; that 
there is something besides those great and wondrous forces 
which sway these orbs ; that they themselves are effects pro- 
duced by an Intelligence that is beyond them. 

There is a Brain somewhere — the heathen knew that ; and 
it is the peculiarity of Chistianity to come in and say, " There 
is a Heart too." And what we want to know is, that you and 
I, and all of us, are not moving like the moon, through the 
ways of blind fatality ; that we are not hung, like bags 
that catch flour, at the bottom of the mill while the ma- 
chinery above crushes the grain relentlessly ; that as, in 
the household, the father and mother think, and forethink, 
and work, and bring out the products of happiness among 
the children, so God, in the larger sphere, works on us and 
in us to do his will, that we may rise in power, in knowledge, 
in virtue, in holiness, and be fitted at last to be transplanted. 
So soon as there is enough of a man to enable one, seeing it 
under a microscope, to swear that he has a personal identity, 
then, when his flesh has dropped away, he may be carried into 
another life ; but, take care ! of a great many of you, if your 
flesh were to be taken away, there would not be enough left 
to enable an angel, with a compound microscope, to see a 
particle ! 

What does it signify that a man is annihilated, if there is 
not enough of him to annihilate or destroy ? When a taper 
goes out, Che tallow is all sucked up and burned ; it goes out 
because there is nothing there ; and your business in life is 
to develop something that is salvable — something more than 
foundation quality ; something more than matter ; something 
more than mere morals ; something that is spiritual, in- 
effable, divine ; so that when the body drops, by that great 
systematic arrangement of providence by which God has 
evolved you, and brought you to a higher and a larger in- 
ward manhood, you will be also brought to that higher 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 571 

sphere, you shall come to the heavenly land, to the society of 
the "blessed, and be with the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the 
presence of God, who is represented tc us by him. 

It is this faith in a divine Being, in his providential care 
over us, and in the influences which he is exerting upon us 
to bring us home to dwell with him, that gives us courage in 
despondency, hope in despair, light in darkness, consolation 
in grief, firmness under resistance, and faith, no matter how 
hard the storm, no matter how black the night, and no 
matter how tempestuous the sea, to go down out of the ship 
and walk upon the waves. If you see Jesus coming to you, 
be not afraid ; for you shall not sink. 

It is in the hope that your thoughts have gone toward this 
great overruling Mind-power, Soul-power, and Administrator 
of the universe and of divine providence, and that you may 
renew your faith and allegiance in that direction, that we 
shall now gather round the table where the broken bread 
represents to all Christ broken for us. He that sutlers 
no more, bless you. He that wanders no more by the sea of 
Galilee, bring peace to you. He that forgave the outcast, 
the harlot, the thief, the rude and riotous man, forgive you. 
He that loved Lazarus, and Mary, and Martha, and John ; 
he that bore with Thomas, the doubter ; ho that gave faith 
to those who had it not, let him draw near to you ; and do 
you draw near to him, and renew your love and fidelity to 
him, in the very affecting though very simple services of the 
Communion of the Lord's Supper. 

Those who desire to unite with us in these services are 
affectionately invited to tarry after the blessing is pronounced. 
This invitation is purely and absolutely spiritual, and not 
ecclesiastical. I do not ask those who are members of sister 
churches — they are welcome, of course. To you who feel 
the need of Christ, and arc willing to accept him as your 
Christ, "and to yield obedience to him, I say, Come. I mean 
all who are conscious of their weakness and sin, and long for 
succor, and will take it at the hands of the Saviour. T\~hat, 
if they belong to the Catholic church ? Yes. If they 
belong to the Unitarian church ? Yes. If they belong to 
the TJniversalist church ? Yes. If they belong to the Swe- 



572 SPECIAL PROVIDENCE, 

denborgian church ? Yes. The humanity that belongs to 
you is more than any name that you can put upon it. A 
man is more than any title that you can attach to him. And 
whatever name you bear, soul, whelmed, imperiled in the 
midst of matter, there is a spirit of God that offers himself 
to you, and calls to you. Do you want him ? Do you feel 
your need of him ? Are you conscious of your relation to 
God ? Then you have a right to these emblems. It is not a 
right that is conferred by churches or priests. I invite every- 
body whose soul needs, and who is willing to accept, succor 
through Christ, to partake of the Supper of the Lord Jesus. 



SPECIAL PROVIDENCE. 573 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* 

We rejoice, our Father, that thou art made manifest to us by the 
world around us, and yet more through our own selves; that thou 
dost bear witness to us by thy spirit, speaking to our understanding 
arid to our moral consciousness; and that thou art better known 
within than from without. We rejoice that thou art drawing many 
to a recognition of their allegiance to thee, and to a joyful willing- 
ness to obey thee, that they may develop in themselves that which 
shall bring them into the son-ship of God. We thank thee that there 
are one and another, continually, waking from a life of sin, arousing 
themselves from the dominion of their senses and bodily appetites, 
and from the perversion of their privileges, abandoning the ways of 
evil, av:d drawing near with hope, for strength and consolation, to an 
all-pardoning Saviour. We thank thee that so many are received by 
him, and are beginning to rejoice in his presence and service, and are 
more and more brought under the dominion of obedience through 
love. We thank thee that thou hast gathered so many here, and that 
thou art still gathering so many through the instrumentality of 
teaching and prayer. We thank thee that by the lives of thy serv- 
ants thou art making the Gospel known to those who are out from 
under its influence. We thank thee that to the poor the Gospel is 
preached ; that it is not without power; that we see so many who are 
being called from darkness to light; that there is so much of joy 
restored to houses which had become desolate, and so much of conso- 
lation to those who were broken in heart, and so much of release and 
liberty to those who were bond-slaves of sin. Blessed be thy name 
for all these tokens of thy presence, for the power which thou didst 
give to thy truth, and for the inspiration of labor which thou didst 
breathe into the hearts of thy true servants. 

We thank thee that thou hast brought into our own number so 
many, and that thy love to them brings summer into this church, and 
that thy heart broods here, and that peace and joy in the Holy Ghost 
abound in our midst. We pray, O Lord, that this may be a haven of 
rest, undisturbed by storms without. Here may we come, week by 
week, to find thee, and to find in thee strength, and courage, and 
inspiration, and goodness, and usefulness. 

Bless those who are this morning united with us. We pray that 
the work which has begun in them may not stop with their life here. 
May they be fruitful branches of this vine ; and may they in all things 
grow up into Christ, who is the Head. 

And we pray that thou wilt spread abroad thy work from the 
hearts of thy servants still more widely. Inspire them, we beseech 
thee, with a righteous enterprise. Give them patience, self-denial, 
and disinterestedness; and may they find, in every sphere, something 
to do in the name of Jesus. 

We pray that thou wilt deepen in the hearts of those who have 
begun to live Christian lives an appreciation of the truth as it is in 
Christ. Wilt thou be pleased to relieve those who are perplexed in 



* Immediately following the reception of members into the church. 



5 74 SPECIAL PRO VIDENCE. 

their experience ; to strengthen those who are weak ; to give courage 
to those who arc timid; to subdue unruly passions where they 
exist; to build up fidelity in those who are unfaithful; to give light 
to those who are in doubt; and to give guidance to those who know 
not thy way. We pray that thou wilt make the path of life j)laiu to 
those who are stumbling in the dark. 

We beseech of thee, O Lord, our G-od, that thou wilt bless all 
instrumentalities which thy servants have been led to employ in thy 
cause. Purify their labors. And especially, when thou art spreading 
abroad through this land a more eager desire for the reformation of 
morals, we pray that thou wilt encourage whatever is wise, and 
restrain whatever is dangerous. Help thy servants so to work in thy 
cause that thy name shall be glorified, that thy will shall be estab- 
lished, and that the evils which afflict and desolate thy people shall 
be limited or put away. 

O God, we pray that thou wouldst inspire the hearts of this great 
people to temperance, to fidelity, to obedience, to uprightness in all 
things, to truth, to patriotism, and to unity therein. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt breathe upon this nation an 
earnest purpose to do good to those who are around it. May its 
hand be saved from wantonness toward the weak. May its greedi- 
ness and ambition be suppressed. We pray that it may abide fn such 
purity, and peace, and strength, that other nations, beholding us in 
Christian liberty, may be led in the same way, and to the same 
blessed consummation. 

We pray for the world. How long wilt thou bear with it? When 
wilt thou come, O thou blessed Saviour, to reign on the earth, to ful- 
fill thy decrees, and to bring to pass those happy years which have 
been predicted? Grant that hindrances may be taken out of the 
way, that the force of things which are for Christ maybe augmented, 
and that with diminishing evil and increasing righteousness the 
work may make haste toward completion, when that time shall come 
in which the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms 
of our Loi'd and Saviour Jesus Christ. Grant, O blessed King, sover- 
eign in love and in power, that ail nations may know thee, and sub- 
mit to thy sway, that the glory of the latter day may dawn, and that 
thy promises may be fulfilled to our heart's joy, and to thQ honor of 
thy name. 

And the praise shall be given to the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Ghost, evermore. A/mcn, 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 



KEEPING THE FAITB. 



** But Christ as a son over his own house ; whose ho _ jse are we, ii 
we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unio 
the end." "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the be- 
ginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end." — Heb. iii. 6, ?£. 

" Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, which bath great re- 
compense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye 
have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise." — Heb, x. 
35,36. 



Who wrote the epistle to the Hebrews is not known, and 
probably never will be known. It is very evident that it was 
written in a time of great distress among the early Christians; 
and that it was designed to bring out such a view of the char- 
acter of the Lord Jesus Christ, his mediation, his ancestor- 
ship, and his connection with Providence, as should gird up 
men who were in great distress of mind, and were liable to be 
carried away from their conviction of Christ by the trials 
which they suffered. 

The need of comfort and strength in pursuing a Chris- 
tian life is just as great now as it was then, though it is very 
different. Then, men were suffering on account of expatria- 
tion, on account of positive persecutions, on account of various 
relations which existed in that early time, before the church 
was knitted together, and before any large experience had 
developed itself upon which they could base, in some sense, 

Sunday Morning, March 8, 1874. "Lesson : Heb. xii. Hymns : (Plymouth Col- 
lection) : Nos. 981, 888. 



578 KEEPING THE FAITH. ' 

their hope in Christ. But in every age of the world, men 
who have attempted to live an upright and just life, conform- 
able to the divine requirement, a life redeemed from self- 
seeking, from animalism, and from the flesh, have always 
come, more or less frequently, to grief. In Scripture — in the 
Psalms, for instance (which are not merely Psalms of David, 
though he wrote a large part of them, but which are the effu- 
sions of Christian experience from many sources, under the 
one title of The Psalms of David, and which represent scores 
of singers) you will notice most extraordinary pleadings with 
God. Sorrow never anywhere else had such high utterance, 
I think, as there. Sorrows that take hold of every side of 
numan experience, under sickness, under personal losses, un- 
<ier persecutions, under depressions of mind from various 
causes — all these abound in the Psalms. And down through 
^ihe Prophets, and to the end of the Bible, there are the mcsfc 
pathetic and the most majestic implorations of the human soul 
with God. 

In the time of our Saviour, and afterward, these phenom- 
ena, which always attend spiritual development, still continue ; 
and in the primitive church, for reasons that I need not men- 
tion, and with which you are all familiar, there was a contin- 
ual necessity of holding men steadfast by faith. It is by faith 
tnat we live. "We walk by faith, not by sight," as the 
apostle says. It is as if the whole ordinary ground of prac- 
tical experience were swept from under us. We are not left 
on foundations where common men live. We are obliged to 
live by the invisible — the invisible world, the invisible God, 
the invisible Providence. We buoy ourselves up by the hope 
of an invisible reward. 

Now, it was to such men as were overwhelmed by trouble 
of one kind or another that the book of Hebrews was largely 
addressed. You will observe, in the passages which I have 
*ead to you, how they were exhorted not to lose their confi- 
dence ; not to- give up their faith ; not to relinquish their 
nope ; not to let their belief in things divine go out ; to see 
to it, that it went on to the end, as a lamp that could burn 
through the whole night, and not leave the watcher in dark- 
ness. 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 579 

The alternations of feeling continue yet. I suspect that 
there is no church of any large membership in which there 
are not scores — in some instances hundreds — of persons who, 
if you were to take such a close and accurate account of their 
inward state as the physician does of their outward condition 
of health, would be found to live in despondency ; who are 
brought, at one time or another, to the very verge of bank- 
ruptcy in faith, from a great variety of reasons ; and who 
need special comforting, and enlightening, and consoling, by 
the power of the Holy Ghost, which was brought into this 
world for the very purpose of giving comfort, and light, and 
consolation to men. 

I propose, therefore, this morning, to consider some of 
the grounds on which men doubt, and on which they are ve- 
hemently tempted to give up their faith in religion altogether, 
or else their own personal hope in religion. I remark, in the 
first place, that many persons are tempted to give up their 
hope because their ideal of feeling is not realized. If religion 
is a perfected condition, transmitted to the human soul from 
the nature of God, then men have a right to be disappointed 
because it is imperfect in them. I will not say that men have 
altogether such an experience as this ; but many men do have 
an experience which amounts very nearly to it. 

Persons go, in New York, to Steinway's or Chickering's 
'to buy a piano. From a large number of instruments they 
hope to get one that is perfect. They try one, and another, 
and another ; and finally they make a selection. The instru- 
ment is sent home, and they suppose it to be all right in every 
respect, so that all they will have to do will be to play on it 
correctly. But they find that the keys are syphered, that 
some of them stick, and that some of them work too easy ; 
that the chords are all wrong ; and that when the instrument 
is brought to tune, it falls back again. And so they com- 
plain, and insist upon having a change, because the under- 
standing was that they were to have a perfect instrument, 
whereas, they have received an imperfect one. 

Persons think that if, while they are in a state of nature, 
they are overtaken by the spirit of God, somehow, by conver- 
sion, by an infusion of religion, they are brought to concert- 



580 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

pitch ; and they think that if they are really converted, if 
they are converted enough, they have nothing to do in life 
bnt to play on a perfected instrument. And when they find, 
as oftentimes they do, that there are no strings at all in the 
instrument, or that there are none that sound, or that there 
are none that sound otherwise than in discord, they do not 
like to say that they have been cheated, that they have had a 
spurious conversion put on them, but they are disappointed. 
"When they find that they have not the feelings which they 
expected, they say, " I do not believe I am a Christian." 

You will take notice how this feeling arises. First, it is 
an ideal which they form. They say, " Conversion by the 
power of the Holy Ghost, so that a man passes from death to 
life, from sin to holiness, is a conversion which makes him 
joyful ; if I have had that change I ought to be joyful ; but 1 
am not joyful ; I cannot be joyful ; my life does not flow in 
the direction of joy ; it flows the other way ; and it is plain 
that I have no right to call myself a Christian." 

This feeling is heightened on account of the remarkable 
experiences which other people have had, and have described. 
Nothing can be more profitably or judiciously employed than 
che rehearsal of men's joyous experience ; bnt where, in class 
meetings, conference meetiDgs, or declaration meetings, the 
statements are all on one side ; where only persons who are of 
a hopeful disposition, who have an emotive constitution, and 
who are given easily to fluxes of feeling, pour out their ec- 
static experiences, they hold up a kind of ideal to men who 
listen, and who say, "There, that is what I always supposed 
was being a Christian. See how triumphant they are. See 
how joyfnl they are. See how positive their convictions are. 
See how they almost behold the Lord. See how, in prayer, 
they enter into the very secret of the Almighty. See what 
peace they have. They tell us that they are conquering the 
world, and some of them feel that they have got it under 
their feet, and that they are treading it down. That is re- 
ligion. Therefore, I have it not." 

Well, now, in the first place, let me say that that is not 
religion — that is, if you mean that it is the exclusive form 
which religion takes on. "What is religion ? It is simply a 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 581 

process that is entered upon, of moral transformation. It is 
an acceptance of the ideal of a true life as it is in Christ 
Jesus. It is the prescription of methods of living which are 
laid down for us in the New Testament. He who honestly, 
and with an intelligent purpose, undertakes to conform his 
common and natural life to this divine ideal, and sets about 
it, has begun a religious life. It is the undertaking of men 
to overrule their whole disposition, each man for himself, just 
as he happens to have been made. Some men are consti- 
tutionally obstinate ; some are coustitutionally proud ; some 
are constitutionally very avaricious ; some are full-freighted 
with dominant passions and appetites ; some have large ideal- 
ity ; and some are plain, without a particle of imagination. 
There are all sorts of men, with all sorts of temperaments, 
and all kinds of life ; and each one for himself undertakes 
this problem — namely, the transformation of his disposition 
so that all his power shall be Christ-like. Persons adopt 
this ideal of character, or that plan of conduct, and then act 
upon it. 

No man can do this instantaneously. There is no miracle 
in conversion. It puts a man at school. 

It is a great misfortune that in the translation of the pas- 
sage, "Follow me, and become my disciples," the original 
was not given. The word which was translated disciples, 
simply means pupils, scholars. Christ, seeing some men fol- 
lowing after riches, some after honor, some after lust, some 
after one thing, and some after another, says, "Follow me; 
be my scholars." Turning from the way they are living, and 
following the way which he prescribes for them, they say, 
"Well, I am willing to learn that way." Then he says, 
"Follow me. Let me be your Instructor. You be my 
pupils." People would understand that. 

A man is unskillful of hand. He places himself at an 
art school, and says, "I am willing to be a draughtsman ; I 
am willing to be a scholar ; I am willing to be taught draw- 
ing." He is a scholar, a disciple, at the very beginning. 
Before he can make a right line, or a curve, he is a disciple. 
That is, he has put himself in the condition of learning, and 
he means to learn. When a man is called to be a scholar of 



582 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

Christ, here is the school of Christ ; here are the rules of 
character and life which Christ prescribes; and he says, 
honestly, " I am willing to he a beginner, a scholar, a learn- 
er, with the purpose of forming my life and character on the 
pattern of Jesus Christ." Having done so much, he has 
begun to be a Christian. I say begun to be, because the end 
is in the infinities. He has started on it. 

When a man is willing to say, "I henceforth renounce 
worldly, selfish, proud ideals of life ; and I take Jesus Christ, 
as depicted in the New Testament, for my visible Exemplar ; 
and I take the rules and prescriptions of the Lord Jesus 
Christ to be my law ; and with all the strength that is in me, 
I will strive to be imbued with these qualities, and to live 
such a life as he requires of me," then he is a scholar of 
Christ. It may be with large feeling or with little ; it may 
be with many struggles or with few : nevertheless, he is 
Christ's pupil. For men come with infinitely diverse consti- 
tutions into this beginning of a Christian life. I am anxious 
that men should understand this, because otherwise they will 
fall, not into intentional insincerity, but into that which 
amounts to conventional insincerity. 

Persons are stimulated by a general interest that is in the 
church, or in the community. Their moral feelings are car- 
ried up to a high pitch. They determine that they will go 
into the church. When they have got there they feel, "I 
have become a Christian, and by the grace of God I mean to 
live right." They do not know that right-living demands, 
from day to day, study and practice ; they do not know that 
right spiritual living, like right bodily living, requires food 
every day to keep up vigor and strength ; and after a very 
little time they begin to find that they are less and less 
interested ; that then they are quiescent ; and then in- 
sensible ; and they look around, and say, " Well, this is 
about the way everybody else is living in this church, and I do 
not need to distress myself in the matter." So they take a 
kind of general idea from what they see in the organization 
to which they belong. And they say of one of the number, 
" That is rather a good man ; he is in the church, and 
is trusting to the promises ; he is not any more particular 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 583 

about his own life, and that of his family, than I am about 
my life and that of my family ; and if he is safe, I am. " 

Thus a great many men settle down into a kind of igno- 
minious content ; but there are a great many others who can- 
not do this. They have too much conscience. They have a 
conscience which is wrought upon by the imagination. They 
cannot believe that they are Christians when they do not 
seem so. They say, "If I am a Christian, I ought to be a 
full-fledged one ; if I am a Christian, I ought to have such, 
and such and such experiences, which I do not have. I 
pray for them, and strive after them, but I do not get 
them. 

Oh that such a person could have some one to make an 
analysis of his mind, and show him where his nature was in 
disproportion', where rectification should take place, and where 
the power of grace was needed ! There are some persons who 
need divine grace to enable them to think better of them- 
selves ; and there are some who do not. There are some 
persons who need divine grace to make them up, and bring 
them into life ; and there are some persons who do not need 
divine grace for any such purpose — they are too nervous and 
excitable anyhow. There are some persons who want more 
activity, and there are some who want less. There are some 
men who are too fruitful of thinking, and some who do not 
meditate enough. Men come to the beginning of Christian 
life with every conceivable disposition, and temperament, and 
character ; and religion in all is generically the same, while 
specifically it is different in each. No two persons on God's 
earth have the same thing to do in order to be a Christian. 
Each one is to take himself as he is in creation, with the in- 
heritance which he received from his ancestors, and with the 
culture which he has acquired in the family and elsewhere, 
and is to say, " Now, I am to conform this, my nature, to 
the character of the Lord Jesus Christ and his precepts." 
The man who is basilar has one problem ; the man who is 
intellectual and without feeling has another problem ; and 
the man who has excessive feeling, with but little reflection, 
has another problem. The man who has many hardships to 
endure, and who is surrounded by ten thousand depressing 



584 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

influences, lias one field to t Juggle in ; and the man who is 
in the midst of refinement has another and different field in 
which he works and strives. God calls every man to go 
through that experience which he needs. 

A carpenter is sent for, and asked to look through a 
house, and report as to what he will put it in thorough repair 
for. He goes oyer it, from top to bottom, and says, " Well, I 
think I can put that house in order for about five hundred 
dollars." Another man says to the same carpenter, " I under- 
stand you have been looking at my neighbor's house, and 
that you have agreed to repair it thoroughly for five hundred 
dollars : I wish you would look at mine, and see what you 
can put that in order for." The carpenter goes through, and 
says, (l I can do it for about fifteen hundred dollars." li Fif- 
teen hundred dollars ! You told that man you would do his 
for five hundred." "But his is a plain two-story house, 
there is no plumbing in it, its roof does not leak, and there 
are comparatively few things about it to get out of order ; 
whereas, yours is a four-story house, with all the modern im- 
provements, and there is everything, to be done to it — the 
bath-room and water-pipes are out of order, the roof leaks, 
the walls are very much broken ; and you had better pay fif- 
teen hundred dollars, and feel yourself lucky to get off at 
that." To put still another man's house in order would cost, 
perhaps, five thousand dollars. The foundations are below 
the old grade, so that everything is damp and mouldy, and it 
must be raised up ten feet into the air before it can be made 
a place where a decent man ought to keep a respectable dog. 
Besides, the roof needs repairing. Then the house is mis- 
partitioned, and the sizes and shapes of the rooms must be 

changed. 

Every man's house must be put in order according to what 
it is. Men, in their own development, build all sorts of 
houses — some one-story, some two-stories, some three-stories, 
some four-stories, some five-stories, and some six-stories. 
Some are very low, some are intermediate in height, and 
some are very high. Some are narrow, and some are broad. 
They are built, too, with every conceivable difference of com- 
bination. As God sees it, in the whole world, the problem 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 585 

of every man's life, which he has to solve, in conforming 
himself to the likeness of Christ, in bringing his higher moral 
powers into the ascendancy, in making the reason and the 
moral sentiments, according to the commands of Christ, gov- 
ern the selfish, the animal, the lowest faculties of his nature — 
this problem in each man's life is different from what it is in 
the life of every other man. 

Now, when men begin a Christian life you see what 
infinite blunders they may make. One man cannot pray ; 
and he says, " Do you not suppose that if I were a true Chris- 
tian I could pray ? I have tried to pray in my family ; but 
I cannot get out a dozen sentences, I am so bashful. Then, 
I am all the time wondering, outside of my prayer, what 
folks will think about it. I have made the attempt time and 
again, and I cannot pray." 

Another man is naturally voluble. He is like the faucets 
in your house, from which, when you turn them, and leave 
them turned, the water will run night and day. His com- 
plaint is that he is overrun with prayer. He wants to pray 
too much. His prayers are not real. 

Much evil comes from the habit which persons have of 
comparing themselves with one another. Suppose a revival 
should break out in a band of music, and the different in- 
struments should undertake to determine whether they were 
right or not by seeing whether they were like each other or 
not. The hautboy is in great distress of mind because 
it does not sound like the bassoon. "If the bassoon is 
right, then I am wrong," it says. The flute is greatly dis- 
couraged because it is not like the violoncello ; and it says, 
"If that is right, I ought not to be here." The violin is 
very much concerned because it is not like the French horn. 
So each instrument is discontented because, by comparison, 
it has found that it differs from the others. 

But is not each a musical instrument in its own way ? Is 
it not the business of each to be musical according to its 
peculiar nature ? They all have to be brought to some con- 
cert-pitch, so that their sound shall combine and harmonize ; 
but an orchestra is made up of all sorts of instruments, some 
wooden, some stringed, and some brass ; and each of them 



586 KEEPING THE FAITH, 

has its own temperament, or tone ; and when chorded and 
played according to their kind, they unite in making harmo- 
nious music ; and the richness of this music depends upon 
•the variety of instruments which are working in a certain 
line, in a given direction, and in harmony with each other. 
It is variety which makes the power and beauty of every 
orchestra. 

Where two persons are identical in their religious life, 
I conclude that one or the other of them is mistaken ; 
for every man has his individual character ; and religion 
consists in the development of each man according as 
God, in his providence, made him ; and where a man is 
developed so, he will not be just like anybody else. Love, 
faith, hope, and the other Christian elements act on differ- 
ent temperaments differently. Paul was probably the proud- 
est of the Apostles ; and John was probably the most fiery ; 
and yet they were both magnificent examples of piety. Paul 
was not like John, and John was not like Peter. There 
were variations of individualism between them. 

It is this want of an understanding of what is implied by 
entering a school of Christ that makes so many persons de- 
spondent in view of the result of their piety. 

Secondly, there are a great many men who are discour- 
aged, and who are ready to abandon their Christian profes- 
sion, on account of the predominance of evil in them yet. 
They feel that a man who is a Christian would not deliberate- 
ly do wrong. The ideal Christian of course would not, and 
your purpose as a Christian would not permit you to do 
wrong ; but there is no man that liveth and sinneth not. If 
any man says that he does not commit sin, he is playing a 
juggler's trick with himself. There are a great many persons 
who say that they are perfect. There is no difficulty in being 
perfect if you bring down your standard low enough. If you 
say, i( Oh, well, I may have my infirmities ; I am subject, it is 
true, to uncontrollable outbursts of nature ; I do a gra t many 
things that are wrong ; but my purpose stands ; I mean right; 
and I am perfect in this, that I never lose the steering-point, " 
— if that is your idea of perfection, why, then, it is not diffi- 
cult for a man to be perfect ; but if perfection means the de* 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 587 

velopment of every single faculty that is in a man, so that he 
shall have a sound mind in a sound body ; if it means that he 
shall hold his twenty or thirty varying faculties so that they 
shall be entirely harmonious with each other, and be in rela- 
tive subordination ; if it means that he shall go on, from day 
to day, doing all that he ought to do toward Gocl, toward his 
fellow men, and toward himself, and avoiding all that he 
ought not to do ; and if, taking this view, he says, " I am 
perfect," then I have no terms by which to express my admi- 
ration for him. If it be true,, my wonder is that he remains 
on the earth. It seems to me that such a perfected state .as 
that; belongs to another sphere, and not to the strife and 
struggle of this world. In contemplating it, I feel as I would 
if I went into an A, B, C, class, and found among the scholars 
a man who was perfectly familiar with all the higher forms of 
mathematics ; who spoke nine living languages, and three or 
four dead ones ; who was an encyclopedia of knowledge : and 
who was so learned that you could not touch him on any 
point where he was not an fait. If I saw such a man sitting 
with abecedarians, I should say, ""What business has he in 
the primary school?" 

Now, this world is but a primary school ; we are learning 
elements here ; and if any man has rounded out his disposi- 
tion and character, and holds everything in equipoise, and is 
equal to the emergencies of life under all circumstances, and 
never fails to hit, he is out of his sphere, and he ought to be 
sent up through the academy, through the college, through 
the professional school, and, oh, a great deal higher than 
that! 

There is no man that lives with any adequate sense of his 
situation here who does not feel that he has yet a great deal 
of work to do in subduing the dominant natural, selfish, 
worldly part of himself. We are born with a body, and we 
shall have to carry it as long as we remain in this world. We 
have a stomach and liver ; and we shall not get rid of them 
during our earthly life. We have a brain ; and that brain 
represents a great many appetites and passions which are very 
useful in subordinate relations ; and it is our business, from 
youth to age, to understand and subdue these basilar in- 



588 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

stincts, these physical qualities, these lower propensities. 
But the power to do that is not equally distributed. It does 
not belong, necessarily, to those who are naturally sincere. 
Men will frequently fall under some temptation when their 
intentions are perfectly good ; and, under such circumstances 
they often say, "I thought that was conquered." 

A man is rash with his tongue ; he is an old swearer ; ne 
has been a ship-master (you know ship-masters fight gales 
with gales, and have an impression that emphatic things 
must have an emphatic utterance); and he is converted and 
joins the church, and folks think that he is a pretty good 
man ; yet, on an unlucky day, something happens to disturb 
him, and before he knows it out comes a blast of fire*; so 
he goes home, and says, "I have been for ten years a mem- 
ber of this church, and I have not got over swearing yet. 
How can I pretend that I am a Christian, and how can I be- 
lieve that the grace of God is in my heart, when I swear?" 

I think that many a man has the grace of God in his 
heart who swears. Not that swearing is a gracious habit ; 
but that the grace of God, as administered before men, does 
not immediately take away any habit that has been intro- 
duced into the economy of life. I do not recommend swear- 
ing ; I do not think it a sign of goodness ; but I can see how 
a man might swear, in a moment of excitement, and not be 
half as bad as a man who never wants to swear. I have seen 
persons so contented with themselves, so perfectly satisfied 
with their attainments, so prospered, having all that heart 
could wish, so self-contained, and so self -admiring, that they 
never felt any impulse to swear in all their lives. 

" Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of 
a fool than of him." 

Now, if this be true in respect to the management of the 
tongue, how is it with regard to the employment of food and 
drink ? Some men can bear stimulants, and some cannot [I 
do not mean simply alcoholic stimulants ; I mean stimulants 
of any kind] ; and where is there any prescription, where is 
there any rule of life, by which men may know what is 
wholesome and what is not wholesome for them to take into 
their stomach ? There are many men who work from day to 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 589 

day immoderately, and who by exhaustion are brought into a 
condition of despondency and gloom ; and they are apt to 
over-eat. They seldom under-eat. But I have known cases 
where persons, by excessive fasting, lost their vital power. 
Most men, however, over-eat, or over-drink, and carry their 
body with too much work, and too little sleep, and do violence 
to the health of the animal on which their soul rides. Almost 
without instruction, they are following indulgences here and 
there, and clouding their conscience, and destroying their 
faith, and lowering the tone of their spirituality. They do 
not overcome the natural man ; neither do they train the 
natural man ; and often they are not taught to do it, nor 
helped to do it. 

I have known persons who, having come into the church, 
complained that they had fallen upon days of darkness, and 
were told, "My dear madam, Satan is tempting you." I 
recollect the case of a woman who had such an experience 
during a revival in which she was profoundly interested. She 
was regarded as one of the saints of the church. Word was 
brought to me that she was in the depths of despair, that she 
had given up all hope, and that she thought she was doomed 
to hell. I had an interview with her, and the moment she 
came into my presence, I said, " Black hair ; black eyes ; an 
excitable temperament ; slender constitution." I made in- 
quiry, and found that that woman had been praying day and 
night. Besides having the care of her family, and working 
with three women's zeal, she had been carrying on this fiery 
fight for five or six weeks, and her nervous system was broken 
down, and she had rebounded into a state of despair. And 
some persons had said to her, "My dear madam, there must 
be some secret sin." She was sent hunting for secret sins. 
Others said, " My dear sister, pray to God to take you out of 
this condition." She had been beseeching heaven day and 
night ; and she was put on a more intense diet and regimen. 
Others said to her, "Ah ! it is the devil. You must fight 
against the devil." This was all well meant, but it was tend- 
ing to drive the woman into insanity. She was within a 
hair's breadth of insanity when I saw her, and I said to her, 
after talking with her till I had gained her confidence, " Will 



590 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

you obey me, on your honor ?" I made her pledge herself. 
Then I forbade her praying another word. I said, "Until I 
give you permission, don't you dare to pray. And do you 
shut your Bible, and put it on the shelf, and don't you look 
into it. And I forbid you to go to any meeting. Now, take 
care of your family, and let those other things alone." I 
prescribed a course of outdoor exercise, certain kinds of food, 
and a little medication. I put her on her word of honor ; 
and I knew that, being of a conscientious nature, she would 
not fly from it. It went on for about a fortnight, or three 
weeks, when she sent word to me that I must come and let 
her off ; that she was so happy, and wanted to pray so, that 
she could not keep her vow any longer ; that if I did not 
come and release her from her promise it would snap. She 
had rested ; she had recovered the tone of her mind and 
body ; and the moment nature had a fair chance everything 
came right. 

Thousands and thousands of persons have been driven to 
despair by the very qualities in them which should have made 
them the most faithful and the most happy Christians. We 
are in a warfare here ; but because " we wrestle against princi- 
palities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of 
this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places," it 
does not follow that we are rid of weaknesses in low places. 

A man has temper, and it goes with him all through his 
life. We talk of losing temper : I never knew of any one's 
losing it yet. It is one of the things which we always keep. 

We have our passions and appetites, and these we cannot 
wholly overcome. A man is suspicions and envious ; but he 
cannot cure his suspicion and envy by going into the church. 
They must be cured by personal conflict in himself so far as 
they are cured at all. 

When a boy begins to write he holds his pen in such a way 
that his fingers and hand are cramped, so that they have no 
freedom of motion ; and he makes each particular letter in a 
mechanical way, and there is no ease about his writing ; but 
we keep him at it, and keep him at it, and keep him at it, 
until he acquires both ease and facility ; and we do not think 
it strange that a person has to be trained thus in the rudi- 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 591 

ments of penmanship. But who undertakes to educate a 
child's spiritual nature in this way, so that the higher facul- 
ties shall have ascendency over the lower propensities ? Who 
attempts by training to subordinate the animal nature to the 
moral ? Yet, how much of darkness and stumbling arises 
from the ignorance of men as to how they should manage the 
points in them that are constitutionally strong, and that are 
so disproportioned that they need to be brought down, drilled, 
subordinated, and made to subserve the end of God's will in 
love ! 

There are multitudes of persons who lose their faith on 
account of their easy addiction to this world, and because 
they are perpetually falling into states of mind which are 
inconsistent with Christianity. It is true that there is such 
a thing as a love of the world which is not consistent with 
the love of God. The kind of world which means society, 
organized upon selfishness and frivolity, to the exclusion 
of the great elements of truth and morality — that kind of 
world it is which is so often spoken of in the Bible as an 
enemy to God. You cannot be a friend to the world in that 
sense, and be a friend to God also. But people think that by 
the tvorld is meant nature, and that they have no right to love 
nature, and that they have no right to love common business, 
or that which the great outside world loves, or is in sympathy 
with, or is susceptible to. And yet, there is no harm in your 
loving the sky, the seasons, everything that is beautiful in 
nature ; there is no harm in your loving the society of your 
fellow-men ; there is no harm in your loving innocent amuse- 
ments and recreations ; there is no harm in your loving the 
things of the world ; and there is no reason why you should 
not enjoy those things, provided they are not taken in excess. 
And what is excess must be determined by the person himself. 
What may be allowable to him may not be allowable to his 
neighbor, because his neighbor is different from him. 

I do not eat salads. Because a Frenchman eats them, and 
finds them digestible, is no reason why I should find them 
digestible, and should eat them. The fact that a thing is 
wholesome for one person is no sign that it would be whole- 
some for another. The adaptability of any kind of food, or 



592 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

drink, or exercise, or course, depends upon the person's tem- 
perament. 

" All things are lawful/' the apostle says. Of course 
crimes and vices are not lawful ; but the ordinary elements 
of this life are lawful, if they are properly used, with refer- 
ence to a man's highest good, with the great end in view of 
subordinating his own nature, including the highest facul- 
ties of his soul, to the will of God. 

When a person comes into the church gay, sprightly, 
witty, social, these qualities ought to be retained, and conse^ 
crated to the service of G-od ; but the tendency is almost 
always to suppress them. 

A young woman is, at the age of eighteen or nineteen 
years, converted. She has been as light as a sylph ; she has 
been universally sought ; she has been the life of the com- 
pany in which she has moved ; she has been full of all that 
makes one attractive in society ; but, now that she is con- 
verted, those peculiarities of her nature which so drew people 
to her have disappeared. She is no more bright, and gay, 
and joyous, and sylph-like, but is sober and restrained. 

Alas ! that men should have thrown overboard from the 
human soul the best things that we have in this poor crying, 
creaking, sinful world. *God sent to men imagination, that 
when the hard and cold reality of life could not be borne, 
they might soar up into the realm of invisible things. This 
world is a great groaning machine which needs lubrication ; 
and God sent humor to make its wheels run smooth. Men 
need something to relieve the sobriety of life ; and God sent 
sparkling wit, by which to light a torch that should guide a 
thousand weary feet in right ways. But nc, you have be- 
come a Christian ; and as when persons go into a convent 
they wear black, so you think you must take on somber looks 
and manners. 

I have seen persons misled in this way, so that they were 
stripped bare of all those qualities which simply needed to be 
sanctified (that is, inspired by the great law of love) to be 
serviceable to men. They were growing like wild unpruned 
trees, and they needed restraining, pruning, here and there ; 
they needed thinning out ; some parts needed to be taken 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 593 

away ; and yet they would have been valuable if they had, 
with these limitations, been allowed to grow according to 
their own inherent nature. But when religion found them, 
it hewed them down, and cut off their branches, and made 
square sticks of timber of them, and they were taken into the 
sanctuary and called " converts." They were divested of all 
nature, life, and beauty. There was nothing left but dry, 
hard, four-square sticks ; and it is no wonder that they were 
spoiled by becoming religious. 

Is there not such a thing as sanctifying to benevolence 
and spiritual life various faculties of one's being ? Is there 
not such a thing as consecrating humor to the service of 
God ? Is there not such a thing as being buoyant and witty, 
and yet being a Christian ? Is it not fitting that a man who 
has imagination should say, " I will devote this gift to the 
benefit of humanity " ? If a man has a cheerful disposition, 
is it not wise for him to say, " I am happy, and I can make 
other folks happy ; and I will carry hope wherever I go " ? 
Ought not every man to say, "I will use such light as God 
has given me to illumine the path of my fellow-men " ? If a 
man has been endowed with traits which qualify him to make 
life easier and more pleasant for others, in the name of God 
let him consecrate them to the cause of Christ, and let him 
keep them. 

Why, men, at first, are like diamonds, which, when found, 
are nothing but rough-looking stones. Diamonds, before they 
are ground and made radiant and beautiful, are an illustration 
of what men are in a state of nature. All that such men want 
is to be polished and made to shine. You cannot have wit 
enough, you cannot have humor enough, you cannot have 
good-nature enough, you cannot have artistic talent enough, 
you cannot have imagination enough, provided you appreciate 
their value, and see them in the light of the uses to which 
they may be put for the good of your fellow-men. And to 
any young person going into the church I would say this : All 
things are lawful, though all things are not expedient ; all 
things are lawful, if you use them lawfully. In going into 
the church, you go into liberty, not into bondage ; and if you 
can, consistently with your conscience, and with a spirit 



594 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

of love to Glod and to men, use the gifts of nature which: 
have been bestowed upon you, use them. They are your in- 
struments. Many persons have their strongest point in 
imagination, and wit, and mirth ; and to take these away 
from them would be like taking away the proboscis of a bee, 
so that he could not find honey, or like taking away the voice 
of a canary bird, so that he could not sing, and so that, being 
unable to sing, he would be good for nothing. 

When Antoinette Sterling; — blessed be her memory ! — was 
here, singing in our choir, she used to go to the mission 
schools, and among the poor and ignorant, and sing to them ; 
and she once said to me, ' i I thank you for teaching me that 
this is my way to do good — singing to people, and making 
them better and happier. " 

Why, if a man should shut up all the windows of his 
room, and close the batten blinds and the Venetian shutters, 
and roll down the curtains, and then should say, " It seems 
to me as if the sun had abandoned me ;" he would be like 
many Christians who shut up all the avenues of knowledge 
through which they are accustomed to receive light, and 
then mourn at their loss, and wonder what ails them. 

There are also many persons who are driven from goodness 
by adversity. Adversity often draws men toward things 
higher and better. Afflictions frequently act for our benefit, 
in ways which we do not understand, or do not take into con- 
sideration. I have known persons who were timid and over- 
cautious, and who were so dispirited and overwhelmed by 
continuous misfortune, that they were broken down, their 
nervous system not being able to bear the strain. Again, I 
have known persons who were proud and sensitive, and who 
were angered by the continued beating of adversity upon them. 
The effect was to bring them into such a state that at last 
they became morbid. I have known persons whom protract- 
ed misfortune threw off from their balance. I have known 
persons who, through adversity, lost their sense of the rela- 
tive proportion and magnitude and importance of things. 
But, on the other hand, I have known proud men who 
never appeared so well as after they had been broken down 
and humbled by adversity, — men who, in ordinary pros- 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 595 

perity, were worldly and greedy, and incautious, and careless, 
but who, after they had been plowed and harrowed awhile, 
brought forth true wheat. When men have been over- 
whelmed by adversity it is the inward condition of their 
mind that determines very much the effect which it will 
have on them. There are not many birds that sing in the 
night, and there are fewer men who sing in the night — 
that is, when they are in trouble — and mount up in joy, and 
live above this world, by the power of the world to come, and 
live by dispositions ministered to by the Holy Ghost, and by 
truths ministered by faith. There are multitudes who, when 
they have resisted, and resisted, and resisted, finally become 
discouraged, and give up their faith. 

Then, there are many who give up their faith because 
they are so beset by skeptical doubts ; by questionings in 
regard to the inspiration of the Bible ; by speculations 
as to the reality of events which are historically recorded ; 
by debates as to whether Christ was a mythical or an 
actual personage ; by various questions on psychology. Men 
exercise their minds on these subjects until they are twisted 
and snarled almost beyond their power of unraveling them. 
Men raise inquiries covering almost the whole ground of 
human knowledge, and almost the entire realm of human 
investigation. A man may start queries which shall lead 
to skepticism from which he shall be utterly unable to ex- 
tricate himself. But one may obtain relief, under such 
circumstances, from the reflection that whatever may be- 
come of the Old Testament and the ISTew Testament ; that 
whatever may become of schools and churches and philos- 
ophers, he has a right to live, and should live, by his rea- 
son — by his reason imbued with benevolence toward God and 
toward men. It is the duty of every man to overcome the 
flesh, and be guided by the great law in himself of purity, of 
truth, of honor, and of fidelity. His business is to aim, in 
his life, at the welfare of men and the glory of God. And 
the success of his life does not depend upon the integrity of 
the Old Testament or of the New. You may take away the 
Bible, and the truth that has already come into the world 
will stand. The pattern of a Christian life, as laid down in 



596 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

the New Testament, will endure, no matter what becomes of 
the Gospels, or of the Epistles. That lives as a fact, and is 
the best thing that belongs to humanity ; the thing that is 
the best worth any man's seeking ; the thing that is noblest 
and highest ; the thing that is the most fruitful of joy here, 
and that has promise of the greatest joy hereafter. 

Suppose all the chariots of old were vain ? Suppose all 
the letters of Paul were vain ? suppose the whole Bible were 
vain ? If the conception of humanity, if the ideal of charac- 
ter, if the vision of God, if the divine power which comes out 
of it, and which thousands and tens of thousands have tried 
and found to be real, remains, I do not care what becomes of 
the old coach, or the mail-bag which brought me the letter 
of good tidings. I have the thing — life and immortality 
brought to light — in my soul, and thousands of others have 
it in their souls, and what do I care for the vehicle ? 

(I am arguing as if I were another. I do care very much. 
Precious to me is the Old Testament, and exceedingly 
precious to me is the New Testament. They are the power 
of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation to those who 
know how to use them. But if a man says to me, " I have 
found flaws in the Bible," I say, " That makes no difference ; 
it is but the vehicle of the great saving truths that it brought 
to us ; and these truths, being in our possession, would be 
ours still, if this vehicle were destroyed. They will continue 
to exist by virtue of their own nature, and not by virtue of 
the validity of the Bible.") 

So long as I do not know the facts of a case, it makes a 
great deal of difference who makes the statement — whether 
a well dressed, intelligent looking man, or a ragged urchin : 
but after I have found out the facts it does not make any 
difference who makes it. If that little ragamuffin told the 
truth it is true, no matter how little or ragged he is. After 
the truth is once told its truthfulness does not depend on 
the one who brought it, or the source from whence it come : 
it depends on what it is in its own nature. 

In regard to everything in the world, while the truth is 
being tried, while it is attempting to prove itself, the ques- 
tion is very important of the relative value of this or that 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 597 

testimony, of this or that witness ; but when the thing has 
once been demonstrated and brought out, it does not make, 
any difference who the witness was that gave the testimony. 

When my schoolmaster had satisfied me that two and two 
made four, I was as well satisfied of it as if I had stood with 
Moses on Mount Sinai, and had heard it proclaimed there. 

And once, experimentally, get the conception before the 
minds of men of salvation by Jesus Christ ; once let the 
truth of God's saving grace become known by the race of 
mankind ; once let that prescription get into the world, and 
though you destroy the vehicle, the thing itself remains. 
Some secrets of science have been lost ; but no great spiritual 
truth that is vital to society or the world was ever lost, or will 
ever be lost, having once been gained. 

Now, then, in these times of slow spiritual growth, of 
disappointment, of social changes, of personal affliction 
and adversity, in this age of doubt and skepticism and 
difficulty, when so many men who were piously educated say, 
" I cannot pray as I used to pray ; I cannot think about 
Sunday as I used to think about it ; I cannot feel as I used 
to feel ; I cannot go to church any more ; I must give up 
everything ; I am all unsettled ; I have lost my belief," they 
should be exhorted to hold on to their faith. You say that 
you have lost your belief. No, you have not lost your belief 
that you are feeble. You have not lost your belief that you 
are sinful and imperfect. You have not lost your belief that 
you yearn for something higher than the present and the 
visible. You have not lost your belief that there is no peace 
for you in the way that you are now living. You have not 
lost your belief that there is a God, and that it is your duty 
to love and worship him. You have not lost your belief in 
manliness, in truth, in fidelity, in self-sacrifice, in disinter- 
ested love, and in the necessity of building your character 
higher than the waves of passion can reach to dash over it. 

All these paraphernalia of history — churches, and syna- 
gogues, and temples, and books, and priests, and liturgies — 
were sent to bring to the minds of men the fact that they 
are children of God, born of the clod, and that they are 
to work their way up out of the dirt. As the sweet, fair, 



598 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

white flower works its way from the soil up to the blossom, 
under the sun ; so men are to work their way up from the 
lower forms of nature till they blossom in the very breath of 
the bright beauty of the God that loves them. 

These truths remain. You say that revelation brought 
them. Another man says that they came in some other 
way. There are various opinions as to how they came. It 
matters little how they came. You cannot take them away 
from me. And they are yours. So there is no reason 
why you should give up your faith, and desert your father's 
and mother's instruction. In respect to a thousand ex- 
perimental things men may change indefinitely ; but oh, 
give not up your faith that at death you begin to live ! 
Give not up the faith that you live forever ! Give not up 
your faith that in this great, wondrous, but yet blind world, 
there is a presiding Deity ! Give not up the faith that 
that Deity is named Love ! Give not up the faith that he 
is drawing you by your best feelings toward him, from day 
to day, that you may be like him ! Give not up the faith 
that you must deny yourselves, and overcome your sins, and 
build your character higher than society requires it to be 
built, if you are to become sons of God ! Give not up your 
father's and your mother's faith, which consists simply in 
this, when reduced to its elements : I am sinful, and Christ 
died for sinners. Cling to that, live by that, and it will 
stand by you in the dying hour, and carry you through the 
flood and the night to the shore unwet with tears — to that 
blessed hemisphere from which drops down no sorrow. 



KEEPING THE FAITH. 599 



PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.* 

O Lord our God, we pray that thou wilt accept the dearly 
beloved children that have been brought into thy presence, and 
before these brethren, this morning. May these parents know that 
they do not love their children as thou lovest them and their off- 
spring; and may they have faith, as they have attempted to commit 
these children to thy care and provident kindness, that thou ,wilt 
hear, that thou wilt think, and that thou wilt not forget their little 
ones. We beseech of thee that their lives and their health may be 
precious ; and if they abide on the earth may they be a light and a joy 
in the household. We pray that they may grow up to honor, to vir- 
tue, to fidelity and to piety, loving God and loving men ; and may 
they be useful in all their lives. We pray that as soon as their open- 
ing minds shall discern between the right and the wrong, between 
things high and things low, they may be influenced so that they shall 
be led to everything that is noble and pure and good. 

Wilt thou sustain these parents as they struggle with the disposi- 
tions of these children, and seek to guide them aright; to breakdown 
unlawful pride in them ; to restrain them from temptations of selfish- 
ness; to win them from the flesh. May they never lose hope and 
faith. May they trust in God, feeling confident that all shall be well. 

We pray, O God, that thou wilt remember all who have brought 
hither their beloved children. We thank thee that some of those who 
have been brought have grown up, and have come again, bringing 
their children to be baptized here. We remember the multitude of 
those who have been consecrated in the presence of the brotherhood ; 
and we pray for them all. We pray for those who are bereaved, and 
mourn over children that are gone — not lost, but gone before, and 
saved. We pray for all those who are growing up, and fcr those on 
whom the care of raising up their children rests heavily. Give them 
faith, and hope, and patience, and wisdom. 

We know that these outward forms are insignificant of themselves ; 
we know that here we can only indicate what is to be done ; we know 
that the work is with thee, and with thy servants, under thy guid- 
ance; and we pray that in this greatest work which we love upon 
earth — the rearing of immortal souls for honor and immortality — we 
may be stirred up continually, and more and more abound in all 
wisdom and faithfulness. 

Bless, we pray thee, all who are gathered together this morning. 
Remember any who are in trouble and affliction. Thou art the God 
of the night as well as of the day — though there is no night with thee. 
Grant that the darkness of this world may seem to thy people as the 
mere overshadowing of thy wings. We pray that there may be a 
covert for every one who is depressed, and pursued, and overtaken 
by besetting sin. May every one who is cast down find in thy pres- 
ence help in trouble. We pray for every one who is in darkness 
respecting his own estate, for those who yearn, who call, and who are 
not answered. Lead them out of darkness, we beseech of thee, into 



* Immediately following: the baptism of children- 



600 KEEPING THE FAITH. 

the full experience of the blessedness of Christian believing. Reveal 
thyself to those who sit in darkness and see no light. Be their Saviour, 
saving them from sin ; saving them with all the power of thy prom- 
ises ; saving them by the truth ; saving them by the use of whatsoever 
means thou wilt. 

Lord, take away from us, we beseech of thee, all despondency ; 
take away from us all giving up ; take away from us all disposition 
to say, It is enough ; take away from us all disposition to lay aside the 
warfare till thou art willing. May every one stand in his place know- 
ing that God has ordained the days, the nights, and the years, and 
the forces thereof, in such a sense that when it is time for him to go 
home thou wilt call him. May every one wait, and wait with his 
lamp burning, and his loins girt about, doing all his duty. And hav- 
ing done all, may thy servants stand— till the morning, till the noon, 
till the night, and to the end. 

Go, we beseech of thee, to all those who are separated from us, and 
whose hearts are yearning for the privileges of the sanctuary, and for 
the fellowship of thy people. 

Grant thy blessing to rest upon those who labor with us in word 
and doctrine. Wilt thou bless those who care for the outcast, the 
poor and needy; those who are instructing the ignorant in our 
schools— the children, the men and the women, who are gathered in, 
and made to hear the blessed tidings of the love of God through 
Jesus Christ. May the work prosper. May it not be overshadowed 
or neglected. May the faith of thy servants not fail. 

Bless, we pray thee, all instrumentalities, everywhere, that are 
employed to spread abroad a knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ 
Jesus. Let thy kingdom come, and thy will be done. Fill the whole 
earth with thy glory. 

We ask it in the name of the beloved, to whom, with the Father 
and the Spirit, shall be praises evermore. Amen, 



Selections from the 

CATALOGUE 



<)F 



FORDS.HOWAR-D&HULBERT, 

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A BBOTT, LYMAN, P.P. 
The Gospel History. [See James R. Gilmore.] 
A MERICAN VERSION : REVISEP NEW TES- 
TAMENT. 

Uniform in style with the Oxford Authorized Edition, 
but having incorporated into the text the " Readings and 
Renderings preferred by the American Committee." With 
alternate readings in the margin ; English readings at the 
back ; autographs of the Chairman and Secretary of the 
General Committee, and of all the members of the America* 
Committee ; and an introduction by the Editor, Rev. Roswell 
D. Hitchcock, D.D., LL.D. Long Primer, Crown Octave. 
Cloth, boards, red edges, $i ; American Morocco, gilt edges, 
$1.75 ; Full Turkey Morocco, gilt edges, $3.25. 

"This essentially 'American Version' | " The whole fruit gathered by all the em- 
will be eagerly welcomed. Certainly Dr. \ inent men, and produced by all the talent 
Hitchcock's name as its editor will give it j that has for ten and a half years been 
an immediate and unquestioned confidence j laboring for a truer, more accurate and 
in^he : public mind."— Publishers IV eekly. ; clearer statement of Christian revelation 
•This is a thing that was bound to , than English-speaking Chiistianshaveevn 
come."— Af. Y. Examiner and Chronicle \ before possessed.''*— Memphis Appeal. 

" A great number of Americans, at least, ; " No more competent man for the wcrk- 
will certainly prefer this version "—Chi- j [than Dr. Roswell D. Hitchcock] could 
cago Advance. be found in America."— St. Louis Presby- 

'' The work by the Rev. Roswell D. ! terian. 
Hitchcock will bear the highest possible j "The work will receive eeneral confL 
indorsement of its trustworthiness and en- ; dence and demand."— Springfield (Mass.) 
tire accuracy."— A 7 ". Y. Christian Union. \ Republican. 

For sale by all Booksellers, or will be mailed, postpaid, on receipi 
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Fords, Howard, & Hulbert — Trade Publications. 



"OEECHER, HENRY WARD. 



D 



Yale Lectures on Preaching. Delivered before 

the Classes in Theology and the Faculty of the Divinity 
School of Yale College. First Series — The Personal 
Elements which bear an important relation to Preaching; 
Second Series — Social and Religious Machinery of the 
Church as related to Preaching; Third Series. — Methods 
of using Christian Doctrines in their relations to individual 
dispositions and the wants of the community. (New Edition.) 
The three Series in one volume, 960 pp., i2mo. Extra 
Cloth, $2.00. {Former Price of the three separate volunits,%^.2^.) 



il Full of common-sense and a knowledge 
of human nature, and admirably adapted 
to meet wants in preachers which no other 
writer can so well supply." — Watchman 
and Reflector. 

"We value them for the views which 
they give of eloquence in general, and of 
\hat eloquence in particular which seeks to 
save men by the exposition and applica- 
tion of the gospel. We value them for 



their stimulating and inspiring effect on 
the hearers, and for the high ideal which 
they hold up. We hope that . . . they will 
have a wider usefulness, not only among 
students preparing for the ministry, but 
among preachers of the Gospel in all the 
churches.'* — Letter from the Faculty, 
Theological School, Yale College : Profs. 
Leonard Bacon, Harris, Day, Hoppin, 
Fisher, and Dwight. 



Norwood 

Novel. (A r ew Edition.) 
trated, $2. 

" Embodies more of the high art of 
fiction than any half dozen of the best 
novels of the best authors of the day. It 
will bear to be read and re-read as often as 
Dickens' l Dombey ' or k David Copper- 
field.' " — Albany Evening Journal. 

" Wholesome and delightful, to be taken 



or, Village Life in New England. A 

vol. i2mo, extra cloth. Iltus- 

up again and yet again with fresh pleas- 
ure. " — Chicago Standard. 

"Hawthorne excepted, Mr. Beecherhas 
brought more of the New England soul 
to the surface than any of our American 
professed writers of fiction." — Brooklyn 
Eagle. 



D EECHER, CATHERINE E. 

Educational Reminiscences and Suggestions. 

Miss Beecher's latest literary effort previous to her death in 
1878. The fruit of more than half a century of unremitting 
and successful labor for the education of women. 36*10. 
Cloth, $1. 

journalists, both in her own country and 
abroad. She is a woman of original views, 
vast experience, and matured judgment. 
.... Her remarks and suggestions are 
eminently practical and sound." — Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 



11 The book is, of course, forcibly written 
and full of interest, and by its flavor of 
personality its interest is much enhanced." 
— Hartford Courant. 

*" Catherine Beecher has received favor- 
able notice from teachers, statesmen, and 



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Fords, Howard, & Hulbert — Trade Publications. 



HAYMOND, ROSSITER W. 



R 



The Merry-Go-Round : Stories for Boys and Girls- 

By the Author of "The Man in the Moon," etc. Small 4to. 
Illustrated. Cloth, "fold back and side, $1.50. {New Enlarged 
Edition, ivith New Stories and Illustrations') 



11 Amid the flood of holiday ficture- 
books, the sizable boys and girls will be de- 
lighted to find one good old-fashioned, 
genuine story-bodk. y with its full share of 
outside decoration and of spirited and ar- 
tistic illustration, but the main attraction 
of which is its stories. Mr. Raymond's 
genius for story-telling is well known.'' — 
Brooktyn Union- A rgus. 

" One of the best story-tellers in the 
world." — New Haven Courier and Jour- 
nal. 

,v Contains some of the very brightest 



and most ingenious of this favorite story- 
teller's tales."— N. Y. Mail. 

" It has, beside the interest of the stories 
that constitute its substance, a certain 
playful familiarity of tone which will go 
far to make its fortune with' young folk, 
who value good fellowship above any 
other quality. Mr. Raymond has some 
good stories to tell, and he tells them with 
every indication that he enjoys the telling, 
and is sharing his enjoyment with h'u 
readers." — N. Y, Evening Post. 



Brave Hearts. An American Novel. Illustra- 
tions by Darley, Stephens, Beard, and Kendrick. ismo. 
Cloth, $1. 



Camp and Cabin : .Life and Luck in 

Little Classic style, cloth, red edges, $1 ; 
{{' Hammock Stories" Style), 50 cents. 



the Sierras, 
paper covers 



U A snug little volume, filled with 
sketches of life and travel in the Wot. 
Mr. Raymond's ten years as United States 
Mining Commissioner gave him free range 
among peaks and canyons, valleys and 



' slopes,' from the Rocky Mountains to the 
Pacific, and his keen eye and witty pen 
have made brilliant use of this opportu- 
nity." — Cleveland (O.) Leader. 



QEARLE, WILLIAM S 



A.M., M.D. 



A New Form of Nervous Disease ; also an 

Essay on Erythroxylon Coca. Ex. Cloth, beveled, $1. 



" Of especial interest to the medical pro- 
fession. . . . It describes and discusses 
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acteristic of which is a symptom that the 
patients describe as shocks or explosions 
in the head, accompanied by other interest- 
ing developments." — Cin. Times-Star. 



" The second paper is devoted to Coca. 
It is a very full, carefully written and inter- 
esting history of the cultivation of the 
plant and of its uses in medicine and as a 
nerve stimulant. From forty to a hun- 
dred millions of pounds of it are produced 
annually, and everybody in Peru seems to 
take to it early in life." — The Critic 
(N. Y.). 



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C TOWE, HARRIET BEECHER. 

Domestic Tales. 

My Wife and I ; or, Harry Henderson's History 
A NoveC. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. (63d thousand.) 



We and our Neighbors : The Records of an Unfash- 
ionable Street. A Novel. (A Sequel to "My Wife and I.") 
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. (53d thousand.) 



Pink and White Tyranny. A Society Novel. One 

of Mrs. Stowe's capital hits, in which, through a bright attract- 
ive story, she shows the follies of self-seeking and self- 
pleasing in a young and charming woman, who, by the 
tyranny of beauty, always managed to have her own way, 
and was miserable in consequence. Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. 



Poganuc People : Their Loves and Lives. A Novel. 

Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50. {Recent?) In the style of early 
New England scene and character, in which Mrs. Stowe is so 
inimitable. As " Oldtown Folks " was said to be founded on 
Dr. Stowe's childhood memories, so this is drawn from some 
of the author's own reminiscences, and has all the brightness 
of genuine portraiture. 

the history and scenery of his native land; 



" It is long since we have had a story 
from Mrs. Beecher Stowe which we have 
so thoroughly enjoyed. As the Americans 
say, it is 'good all round."'- -London 
Times. 

" A fertile, ingenious, and rarely gifted 
writer of the purely American type, doing 
for the traditions of New England, and its 
salient social features, the same sort of ser- 
vice that Scott rendered to the Scotch and 



that Dickens performed for London and its 
lights and shadows, its chionic abu-es of 
every sort ; the same service that Victor 
Hugo has done for Paris, in all its *oci<l 
strata. Mrs. Stowe still keeps the field 
and her harvests ever grow. She woiks a 
vein of increasing luster." — Titusville 
(Pa.) Hera '■ 



N.B.— Mrs. Stowe's Domestic Tales (the above- 
named four Novels) are also issued in uniform style, in a 
box, and sold in that form only at $5 the set. 



2EIP For sale by all Booksellers, or will be mailed, postpaid, on receipt 
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STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER.— continued. 

Religious Books. 
Footsteps of the Master: Studies in the Life of 

Christ. Especially appropriate to the Church Seasons — 
Christmas, Lent, Easter, etc. With Illustrations and Illu- 
minated Titles. i2mo. Choicely bound for Gift purposes. 
Extra Cloth, beveled. Price, $1.50. 

" A very sweet book of wholesome re- I her ripe religious experience, and her fer 
figious thought." — TV. Y. Evening Post. vent Christian faith. A book of excep- 

M A congenial field for the exercise of I tional beauty and substantial worth." — 
her choice literary gifts and poetic tastes, ! Congregationalist (Boston). 

Bible Heroines : Narrative Biographies of Prominent 
Hebrew Women in the Patriarchal, National and Christian 
Eras. Royal Octavo. Elegantly Illustrated in Oil Colors, 
with copies of Famous Paintings. Richly bound in cloth, 
$2.75 ; gilt edges, $3.25. 

the whole work is one which readily cap- 
tivates equally the cultivated and the relig- 
ious fervent nature." — 'Boston Common- 
wealth. 



" The fine penetration, quick insight, 
sympathetic nature, and glowing narra- 
tive, which have marked Mrs. Stowe's pre- 
vious works, are found in these pages, and 



New Juveniles. 

A Dog's Mission, and Other Tales. Small Quarto. 
Illustrated. Cloth, extra. $1.25. 

ALSO NEW AND ENLARGED EDITIONS OF 

Queer Little People. A Book for Young Folks. 

Illustrated. Small 4to. $1.25. 

"In the list of qualities belonging to I ' Qu«er Little People' is a collection jpf 
Mrs. Stcwe's versatile genius, her power stories about domestic or familiar animals, 
of entertaining the young is not the least, i told in most capiivating style, and convey- 
remarkable. Her productions in this line ing, with marvelous ingenuity and power, 
are original, racy, and healthful in a high lessons which the aged as well as the 
degree. Her skill in allegory is, we think, young might thankfully receive." — Amer- 
unrivaled among the writers of our day. | ican Presbyterian. 

Little Pussy Willow. Copiously Illustrated. Small 



4to. $1.25. 

'' A girl's story with a moral, and with 
many delightful touches of New England 
scenery and domestic life. The story has 
all ihe familiar charm of Mrs. Stowe's sim- 
pler tales, which are always her best." — 
Springfield Republican. 



" The very sweetest, prettiest child's 
book. It seems as if Mrs. Stowe's genius 
was just fitted for this work, so exquisite- 
ly has she created her country maiden ; 
and the illustrations are very beautiful." 
— Christian Register (Boston). 



(22ir For sale by all Booksellers, or will be mailed, postpaid, on receipt 
of price by Fords, Howard, &> Hulbert. .^gJJ) 



Fords, Howard, & Hulbert — Trade Publications. 



TOURGEE, ALBION W. 
I ■ —^— « mi-H-l l I II BII II MMMMBBM 



American Historical Novels. 



" Scarcely anything in fiction so powerful has been written, from a merely 
literary stand-point, as these books. ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' cannot compare with them 
in this respect." — Springfield (Mass.) Republican. 

A Fool's Errand. By One of the Fools. 361 

pp. Cloth, $1. 

" One of the most notable books that 
have appeared in this country for many 
years. 1 ' — New York Times. 



ik The sated novel-reader will find it 
fresh and thrilling." — Boston Daily Ad- 
vertiser. 



Bricks without Straw. 521pp. Frontispiece. Cloth, 



$1.50. 

" The characters are real creations of 
romance, who will live alongside of Mrs. 
Stowe's or Walter Scott's till the times that 
gave them birth have been forgotten." — 
Advance (Chicago). 

" Since the days of Swift and his pamph- 
leteers, we doubt if fiction has been made 



to play so caustic and delicate a part." — 
San Francisco News-Letter. 

kk The delicacy and keenness of its satire 
are equal to anything within the range of 
my knowledge." — Prcs. Anderson, Roch- 
ester University. 



Figs and Thistles. 536 pp. Frontispiece. Cloth, 



$1.50. 

" In his last volume, ' Figs and Thistles,' 
Judge Tourgee has put into the form of 
attractive fiction something of the lives 
and loves of President Garfield and his 
wife. In the passages relating the grief 
of the wife over the reported death of her 
husband, and the subsequent devotion and 
care with which she nurse'd her wounded 
hero back to life, he uses language which 
describes with marvelous accuracy the 
actual conduct of Mrs. Garfield in the 



trying scenes which she has been called 
upon to undergo." — N. Y. Tributie. 

" Crowded with incident, populous with 
strong characters, rich in humor, and from 
beginning to the end alive with absorbing 
interest." — Cominonwealth (Boston). 

"Judge Tourgee has shown himself, in 
his previous stories, an exceedingly cleve; 
delineator of men an-5 manners, but we. 
are inclined to think that ' Figs and This- 
tles * is the best book which he has yet 
given to the public." — Phil. N. A merican. 

John Eax and Mamelon: The South without the 

Shadow. 300 pp. Cloth, $1. 



" ' A Fool's Errand ' lay in the full gloom 
of the shadow. This book reflects the 
light of the times." — Indianapolis News. 

" Displays, more than any of his pre- 
vious works, his power of humor and of 
graphic description of men. scenes, and 
events." — Christian Herald. 

11 Cannot fail to reach and impress a 



wide constituency of readers." — The Am- 
erican (Philadelphia). 

" Of absorbing interest to those satiated 
with the artificial atmosphere of the mod- 
ern society novel." — Boston Traveller. 

" Will greatly add to the author's pop- 
ularity." — Commercial Advertiser (De- 
troit). 



For sale by all Booksellers, or %uill be mailed, postpaid, on receipt 
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